Waking the Beast
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: "You weren't kidding when you said 'change of camouflage', were you, O'Conner?" Brian/Mia, Brian/Dom, Sam/Mikaela, Hobbs/Fuentes, Fast Five/Transformers movie cross.
1. Waking the Beast

**Title**: Waking The Beast

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Rating**: M

**Spoilers**: Fast and Furious franchise through Fast Five (2011); Transformers (Bay-verse) fusion

**Summary**: _Dom frowned, the lightness in his expression finally fading as his brows drew together. "What have you done to my car, O'Conner?"_ 6000 words.

**Notes**: Bridge-fic between F&F4 and Fast Five, for the meme prompt, "Transformers crossover, slowly bringing the car to life". Don't _even_ ask, because I have no idea: I channeled this on very little sleep and a lot of cold meds.

* * *

><p>By the time they finished taping Brian up at the hospital, he already had a pretty good idea how the next several months would play out. For him, there'd be leave- maybe disciplinary, maybe just medical, depending on whether Penning decided his having brought Dom back with Braga counted as fulfilling orders- and then probably an extended period of desk duty. For Dom, there'd be County, while he waited through his trial and sentencing. And for Mia- whatever she'd put up with from him while all three of their lives were in limbo, until the gavel came down and it was time to make a decision.<p>

He already had a pretty good idea how it would go down, though he planned to fight for Dom's freedom as far as he could within legal lines first. But when they did write Dominic Toretto a return ticket to Lompoc- Brian intended to make sure he never got there.

Which meant money. Cars. A team. And whatever extra leverage he could scrape up. And considering where he had been for the five years before the FBI sent him back to Los Angeles...

Brian paused for a moment to rest a hand on the hood of Mia's Honda NSX when she arrived to pick him up, just testing the feel of the warm metal under his palm. It thrummed with the vibration of the car's well-tuned engine, that familiar sensation that had been in his blood since he was a kid in Barstow. But there was also just a hint of something extra: that strange new twinge he'd picked up during the catastrophic conclusion of his deep cover assignment. His fingers tingled, a prickly sensation like his hand had been asleep for awhile and was just waking up; and through that connection, he could practically _feel_ the shape of the whole car like a living image in the back of his mind.

The contact was a heavy drain on his energy, though, even just those few seconds of focus, and he was still aching from the crash in the desert. Brian lifted his hand again and watched a pale blue shimmer dissipate into the shiny black paint. At that rate, it would take forever to affect an entire car. And he wasn't sure just what the results would be; he wasn't exactly an expert at dealing with the effects. He didn't think anyone was, not even the surviving Sector Seven chiefs. But he had a pretty good guess. And it was going to take months for him to rebuild Dom's Charger, regardless, while they all waited through the fallout from the collapse of Braga's empire.

He felt the back of Mia's hand against his forehead, and realized that sometime in the last minute or so he'd closed his eyes, listing like a weary statue in the hospital parking lot. He gave her a wan smile, one hand pressed his side, and let her guide him to the passenger side of the car without a word. The argument about just how crazy he _wasn't_ could wait until he was feeling a little healthier.

The risk would prove worth it, or it wouldn't, but either way this new gift of his was hope, an extra edge; he'd take it and be grateful. If there was one thing the rough road he'd trod since first swearing oaths to constitution and country had shown him, it was that doing right by _people_ mattered far more to him than legalities. Nothing he'd lose by acting was worth more to him than the happiness of the woman in this car... and her brother.

Her brother. God, _Dom_. Brian leaned back against the headrest and pressed the heels of his hands to his face. Time to stop running, Dom had said out there in the desert. But what Brian thought he'd really meant was: _I can't do it alone anymore_.

"Just one more time, Dom," he promised under his breath. "Just one time more."

* * *

><p>Five years ago, he would have sworn there was nothing Bilkins could say, no possible angle he could play with Rome's record cleared and Dom far out of reach, to convince Brian O'Conner to pick up another badge. Especially under the auspices of the <em>FBI<em>, the agency whose investigation into a series of truck heists had thrown Brian into Dominic Toretto's path in the first place and proved to him he hadn't left his roots as far behind as he'd thought.

A home where his father was gone so much, Brian could barely remember him. A mother who could hardly cope with her wild, loudmouthed son; and the street culture that had raised him instead. Barstow had nothing on Los Angeles, but he'd still got into enough trouble there to land him in juvie- where he'd met Roman Pearce, and opened up a whole new chapter of chaos. If it hadn't been for a couple of scrapes with the drug scene- shit he'd seen happen to good people as a result of other men's greed- and a desire to impress a couple of his hotter teachers, he probably wouldn't have had the grades or inclination to apply to the Academy after that. But he'd picked up some stupid idea that someone who _knew_ the environment might have a leg up in protecting the people who lived in it, and let a career counselor talk him into giving it a try.

It had gone wrong from the beginning: he'd been totally blindsided by Rome's reaction. And it hadn't ended any better: he still didn't know how much of that original decision to hand Dom the keys to his Supra had been prompted by his feelings for Dom himself, or from guilt over that festering years-old breakup with Rome. And in between- well. He'd been a motivated cop, sure, but nothing all that special in the scheme of things. What did he have that Bilkins couldn't find in someone more suitable?

The answer, in the end, had surprised him: his _name_. The surname he'd shed so easily to go undercover turned out to be a passcode into a government black hole called Sector Seven. Current membership was hard to pin down, but seemed to follow family lines, so Bilkins figured Brian's name might get him in where all previous infiltrators had been rejected out of hand. If his father had lived past his twelfth birthday, he'd probably have been recruited eventually anyway, so they'd be predisposed to think of him as theirs. And the FBI would thereby get the chance at clandestine eyes inside an organization that made a habit of stomping all over their turf and refusing to share their toys.

_Something_ had overturned a hornet's nest in Virginia just a couple of months earlier, something referred to by the code name "NBE Two," and they were engaged in a massive cross-country operation to track it, cock-blocking every other agency along the way. The O'Conner connection was the only one the FBI had, and it had a limited window of usefulness before it started to stink of a setup.

Bilkins had the paperwork ready to sanitize Brian's recent history and make it look as though he'd been overpowered, rather than aiding and abetting, in Los Angeles- and that the FBI had used Dom's escape as a convenient cover to secretly transfer him and set him to tracking other criminals in the car scene. But now that Verone was in jail and he'd blown that 'cover' in the process, Bilkins would naturally have transferred Brian to other duties... where he would just so happen to show up at a scene Sector Seven was investigating. They'd surely recognize his name. And it would be up to him to take it from there.

Brian would have considered doing it just for the chance to learn more about his dad's background, and to stick it to some arrogant assholes in the process. But Bilkins sweetened the deal by promising to clear the outstanding warrants for every one of Dom's crew bar Dom himself. Letty and Leon, whose prints had been found all over the cars crashed at the last heist site- and Vince, who'd broken out of the hospital as soon as he was mobile and disappeared. They'd be able to come home again, if they should choose to do so. And the FBI would leave them and Mia alone, unless Dom reappeared again.

Or unless Brian fucked up. What was given could always be taken away.

It wasn't _everything_ Brian wanted, but it was more than he knew he had any right to expect. He signed on the dotted line, asked Rome to take care of his money, and asked Tej and Suki to watch over Rome. Then he put on a suit and headed for the scene of an unusual 'traffic accident'.

Sector Seven did in fact find him there. And that was the last time Brian O'Conner had breathed free air.

* * *

><p>The kicker was, Brian had actually made a place for himself inside the Sector. He'd connected with cousins and uncles he hadn't known existed, and learned secrets about the space race and what Jesse would have referred to as 'car gods' that had totally blown his mind. And where competing oaths were concerned, he'd also discovered a new priority: family still first, but planet next, before nation.<p>

He'd assumed Bilkins understood that, too, because none of the information Brian passed back- a lot of it couched in vague terms, because seriously, as if the guy would believe him about 'possible evidence of extraterrestrial mechanical life' over the simpler 'advanced experimental tech' anyway- ever surfaced in a way that would point back to him. His fourth life seemed charmed, lived in a new, wider world where cars could _drive themselves_ and he wasn't so much tracking criminals as dangers to _all mankind_. He'd known he'd never forget Dom or Mia, but he'd finally started to move on.

But then the attack on Qatar happened. NBE Two surfaced as a Camaro and picked up a couple of teenaged friends. Brian got his first glimpse of the base under Hoover Dam where NBE One and the artifact the entire organization had been built around were kept, and discovered just what the administration had been doing with it. He watched a kid defend a giant yellow and black 'bot as though it was family. And finally- sick to his stomach with the implosion of yet another worldview- he fought at ground zero during the knock-down drag-out battle through the streets of Mission City.

Yeah, he would never be entirely copacetic with how that had gone down. In the aftermath, rather than assigning him to NEST along with all the other odds and ends of organizations who'd been caught in the conflict, the FBI simply kicked him over to the Los Angeles offices. His Sector Seven badge, false or not, apparently made him persona non grata to the folks in charge. After all he'd done, when his chance had arrived to work with actually friendly beings who'd come all the way across the universe to take the forms of fast cars- _that_ was when the FBI finally decided to fuck his life up again and pull him.

His first disciplinary leave _really_ shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone involved, after that. And he'd barely returned from _that_ when he'd been hit with the Braga investigation and Letty had turned up at his front door. What was right and what was legal had parted ways on him once more.

In the meantime... interesting little tidbits had started popping up in the news, warnings of 'viruses' that manifested as electrical discharges and made computers appear to be alive, or 'pranks' where people suddenly found ordinary home appliances replaced with hyperactive little machines. Brian had been close enough to see a brilliant blue wall of fire expand from the encounter between the Witwicky kid and NBE One, passing through anyone and everyone in its path, animating things that had no business being alive and making his body convulse like he'd just been tased full power. His cell phone had spontaneously upgraded itself to the newest model without his input. And before the FBI had bogarted him from the group of Sector Seven agents awaiting debriefing and dispersal, he'd watched a military guy that looked a lot like Rome bang on a pop machine- and then swear, as a blue discharge surged out from his fist and it abruptly started skittering away from him.

Fast forward to the Toretto's garage, where Brian laid hands on the twisted frame of a badly damaged 1970 Dodge Charger and poured his hope into it along with every spare cent he could muster.

He'd earned a place for himself there, too. And _that_ one he absolutely refused to abandon.

* * *

><p>"That thing is a curse, you know," Mia told him the Saturday after the wreck of the Charger arrived. She'd brought out a tray of sandwiches so he wouldn't have to stop to make food: tuna, of course, accompanied by a sweating bottle of Corona.<p>

Brian looked up from his salvage efforts under the Charger's hood and gave her a tired grin, wiping ineffectively at his hands with a greasy rag. She was gorgeous, even with the worried frown drawing lines between her brows and the tight set of her mouth: as similar and yet different from her brother as the cars they chose. Both were capable of giving him a run for their money, powerful and compelling in their own right, burning under the surface with a passionate fire- like an agile little import parked next to good old fashioned American muscle. Both fine bodies, regardless of make.

"I know," he told her. "This is, what, the third time someone's rebuilt it? And it'll always carry memories of your dad, and of Letty. But Dom's invested so much meaning into it- we'll need a powerful car for the stop I have in mind anyway, and at least this way I'll know exactly how much it can take."

He dropped the rag atop the nearest toolbox, then walked over, gathering her loosely against him with hands at hips and a soft kiss against her mouth. She melted against him in return for just a moment, skimming one slim hand up over the front of his stained tee-shirt and licking against the seam of his lips- then pulled back, shaking her head with a rueful smile.

"No. No, you know I love you, Brian- but I'm not going to let you do this."

He pulled back again, staring at her in bafflement. He'd thought she'd forgiven him; they'd been sleeping together, mostly _sleeping_ but definitely together, since that first evening she'd brought him home. Holding her in his arms had been such a balm- he'd almost forgotten what it was like to belong in his own skin again, to be loved by someone who loved him for the guy underneath the Agent armor he'd worn for so long. And the way she'd hungrily traced him with careful fingertips and intent, dark gaze- he'd thought she'd been just as much with him as he'd been with her. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to let you mix your feelings for Dom up with your feelings for me," she said, firmly. "No, don't make that face at me; I think I know you better than that by now. When you're out here, I _know_ I'm not the one on your mind, and I've seen the way you look at that car."

She sounded bitter, but not angry about it, the corner of her mouth tugged up in a weary half-smile. Like the day she'd told him she didn't date her brother's friends- or the day she'd told him that Dom owned him now. As though that was simply the natural order of things in her universe.

"Mia- Mia, no, that isn't what this is about," he protested, capturing one of her hands when she tried to pull away, shaking her head. He buried a brief flash of guilt and focused on the bit about the car; _that_ part of it, at least, she was really getting the wrong impression about. "I'm serious- there's something I've been meaning to show you. C'mon."

He pulled her toward the door, out into the sticky warmth of the evening, cast in orange light where the setting sun shone through the smog. Mia's NSX sat at the curb, the slick, slinky black shape so much more _her_ than the commuter car she parked in the clinic lot at work every morning.

"Here- you picked up any scratches lately?" he asked, giving it a once-over.

She rolled her eyes at him, but she seemed a little more interested, a little less resigned to whatever he might have to say as she gestured toward the rear driver's side door. "Some asshole keyed her a couple of days ago. I haven't had a chance to get it taken care of yet."

Hector had taken over the old Toretto garage several years before, when his brief legit racing career came to an end; Brian was sure he'd have helped Mia out free of charge. It was a pretty simple cosmetic problem, though- one that would make for the perfect demonstration. "So, check this out," he said, kneeling next to the door and bracketing his palms on either side of the ugly scratch. "Watch this."

Then he closed his eyes, and reached for that place of _zen_ that he'd found worked better than actual focused concentration. It flowed better that way, whatever the _it_ was that had worked its way into his system like a shot of NOS in Mission City, and tired him less- and the more he worked with it, and the healthier he felt, the more he seemed able to channel it. He'd accidentally shorted the radio in his own car the day the tow truck showed up, but he hadn't made any mistakes like that since.

"Brian, what are you- oh my God. What is that- _Brian_." A hand fell on his shoulder: Mia's, gripping tightly as he breathed deep, letting the _calm blue sense of purpose_ crackle through his fingertips into the _free air family open road_ the steel shape in front of him represented to her.

When he opened his eyes again, he was sweating, and the shadows were long over the yard- but the paint was whole again. And under the solid surface of the finish, faint off-black lines had spread out from the point of contact; hard to see unless you were looking directly at them, like the spots on a black jaguar. "Hmm, you like that, huh?" he murmured to the car as he sat back on his haunches and then heaved up to his feet. "Racing stripes."

"_Brian_," Mia repeated, her voice a little strained.

He turned toward her, then leaned back against the car, reaching out to grasp one of her hands. "Yeah, so I'm not quite Brian O'Conner, original model, any more than the Charger is," he shrugged. "But it'll get the job done. And _maybe_ it'll be a little more insurance toward keeping Dom in one piece, when I'm done with it."

"What happened to you?" she breathed, searching his face with wide, alarmed eyes.

"Five years, and some pretty classified stuff," he shrugged, not sure where to start. "But there at the end- you saw the stuff on the news about the industrial accident and the experimental robots, and people being exposed to some kind of weird radiation?"

"Yeah- and?" she frowned.

"Not so much an industrial accident. And, yeah. Radiation." He waggled his fingers. "Not the kind that'll kill you, though, so far as I can tell. I'm still working it all out."

"And it, what. Lets you heal _cars_?" She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

"Not totally sure yet. I'm sure the government knows more, but I kind of fell between the cracks of the official roundups- they don't know I can use it yet, and I'm not inclined to point it out to them."

Mia digested that a moment, biting her lip as she studied him further, minutely examining his face like she was comparing it in detail to some older memory. "So all of this," she finally said. "This crazy plan- that's why you don't care about having an alibi for the breakout. You _expect_ to be a fugitive."

"Did you think I was trying to martyr myself, or something?" Brian couldn't help but smile at her at that. "Mia, I would have wanted to come with you anyway. But no- it wouldn't be a good idea for me to stay with the agency. There's a couple agents I'll miss- I'd have liked to introduce you to Trinh, the agent I've been working with on the Braga investigation, you'd like her- but the longer I'm there, the more likely it is that someone'll notice."

"And what would happen then?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Not sure." He might get assigned to NEST after all- wherever they happened to be headquartered. Or they might still bounce him, and he might end up somewhere he _really_ didn't want to be. "Let's not find out. We wait out Dom's trial. I fix the Charger. Then we pack up and go, one way or the other."

She sighed, then leaned in for a kiss. "All right. I'm not sure what to believe yet- but then, what part of my life _has_ gone how I expected since I met you? Come inside; I'll fix you something better than a sandwich, and if you're lucky, I'll let you pick up where you left off out in the garage."

After the little demonstration with the NSX, he wouldn't have been much use with the Charger that night anyway. "Okay," he said. "I love you, you know that?"

She snorted, then smiled again, a little more genuinely than before. "I know that, Brian. I'm just not so sure you're _in_ love with me."

"Mia..."

"No. Not tonight. Come on." She pulled him inside, then, as the sky darkened above them. It only took a few moments to toss together a meal of spaghetti and cheap wine- and a few more to toss her into the sheets afterward, opening her up with fingers and tongue and loving her as well as he knew how.

The next morning, he woke to an empty bed and a cooling cup of coffee on the nightstand.

That night, fresh sandwiches waited for him atop a toolbox. But there was no other sign of Mia around.

* * *

><p>As if by consensus, though they never spoke of it, Mia never came out to the garage again while he was working. Brian started staying over at his old apartment again about half the time, especially on days he went for visitation at the county jail. And they slept together less and less as the weeks rolled onward.<p>

Once his leave ended, Stasiak made every day in the office a trial despite Trinh's best efforts, and Dom's increasing reserve behind bars just added to the building atmosphere of frustration. Brian took everything out on the cars: pouring all his frustrated drive into the Charger, all his protective hunger into oil changes and car washes and various unnecessary tune-ups on the other vehicles he and Mia drove. They all developed spontaneous additional detailing and a distinct decrease in gasoline consumption, so he knew it was helping a little; but that didn't help him figure out what to do about his problems.

Mia did make an effort to eat more meals with him, though, calling him in for lunch on the weekends and making the occasional hot supper on the evenings he spent there. He always did the dishes with her afterward. And they talked, about childhood memories, about favorite vacations- and about Dom. That part of their rapport hadn't changed, despite the distinctly lackluster course of their romance.

"Mia," he asked her one day, towel draped over one shoulder and arms wet to the elbows with suds. "I'm not sure how to ask, but. Did I do something wrong? Or am I just imagining that you broke up with me when I wasn't looking?"

She stared at him, then walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest, chin resting on his shoulder. "Kind of?" she said.

"What do you mean, kind of?" He looked up, meeting her eyes in her reflection in the window over the sink.

She smiled at him, mysterious this time rather than sad: a woman who'd made a choice, rather than wait for an outcome. "I think we make better friends than romantic partners," she said. "I won't kick you out of my bed, Brian, but I think we both know whose future you're planning, and it isn't mine."

He swallowed. But how was he supposed to argue with that? "Mia, he's giving up," he said, helplessly.

"No, he isn't," she said, turning her face so her cheek rested against the towel. Her next words were muffled, but distinct and full of conviction: "He's leaving the ball in your court, Brian."

Something quivered in the pit of his stomach, and he blinked to find his eyes warm and wet. "I love you," he said, lost for anything more coherent to say.

She hugged him close for a moment, then let him go, still smiling. "I know."

* * *

><p>The first day the Charger moved on its own was three weeks before the judge delivered Dom's sentence. It was a small thing- the hood popping open just before Brian reached for it, as though anticipating his attention.<p>

"Hey," he blurted, surprised- then laid his hand on the engine block and concentrated. "_Hey_."

_Something_ briefly sparked to life, reaching back for him: warm, not quite conscious but affectionate, eager- and _focused_, determined never to see a set of taillights, as though all the emotions he'd poured into it had taken on independent life under its metal skin. Then the burgeoning awareness faded again, leaving a sensation of sleeping energy behind it.

He grinned to himself, wild and suddenly full of blazing hope.

* * *

><p>Events progressed much more swiftly after that.<p>

Brian had left his whole life behind four times already; the day Dom boarded the bus to ride from L.A. County to Lompoc was, in the end, just one more horizon line. The sole difference was- this was a change he was looking _forward_ to, thumb poised over the NOS rather than downshifting to give him extra time to prepare for upcoming curves. Mia had already done all of her grieving, too. When the day came, they were ready; they met Leo and Santos at the predetermined point along the route, then sped toward freedom, shedding their jobs and households like the empty shells they were.

Brian stroked a hand over the dashboard of the Charger as they approached the bus, murmuring low words of encouragement to the revving engine. "Remember," he said, "we've got to hit it just right. When they get the bus to swerve, we have to flip it right over us- hard enough to toss the guards around, but not to kill anyone. You sure you can handle that much mass hitting your frame?"

A backchatter of static suddenly blared back at him from the speakers, and he smiled, accepting the indignant rebuke. "I know, I know, we've been over it already; I just had to make sure you weren't getting cold treads on me now."

The horn made a rude noise as he pressed the accelerator down, and he laughed. "Yeah, me neither. Okay, then. Let's do this thing."

He would forever remember the next few moments in slices of image and sensation: the amber shimmer of the dry fields spreading to either side of the road; the little smirk on Mia's face as she gunned by him to provide the initial distraction; the full-body jerk and deafening shriek of the brakes as he and Dom's car slowed at just the right angle in front of the prison bus to bounce it skyward. The pounding of his heartbeat as several tons of steel and prisoner tumbled by overhead, a hair's breadth from flattening them both. The slow grin curving Dom's mouth as Brian pulled up alongside him and popped the passenger door open.

They must have said something to each other then, but the car gods alone knew what it might have been. He was so juiced on adrenaline that it wasn't until he pulled over several miles later that he started experiencing linear time again, and Dom was still grinning, relaxing the tension in his frame by slow degrees.

"Why'd we stop, O'Conner?" he rasped, absently petting the seat next to him with a callused hand as he turned bright eyes toward Brian. "Cops'll be along soon, and I was enjoying the wind in my hair."

Brian could feel the car soaking that up, and snorted as he reached into the back seat for the second duffel. "I thought we could spare a few seconds for a change of camouflage," he said, tossing Dom the bag. "Mia grabbed a few of your favorites out of your closet."

"This day just gets better and better." Dom's grin widened as he reached for the fastenings of his jumpsuit, apparently ready to strip down right there in the car.

"No, no, out of the car first," Brian said hastily. Not that he really _wanted_ to interrupt that free show- but this really wasn't the time. "There's something that you _really_ need to see."

"Whatever it is can wait until we get where we're going," Dom shrugged, peeling down the jumpsuit until he was bare to the waist.

Brian swallowed, eyes drawn to the sharply cut lines of muscle under taut, tan skin, then shook his head sharply and matched gazes with the other man again. "No, it can't. I'm serious, Dom. You have to get out of the car, just for a minute. It has to do with the Charger."

Dom frowned at that, the lightness in his expression finally fading as his brows drew together. "What have you done to my car, O'Conner?"

The radio blatted static again; Brian sighed and stroked a hand along the curve of the wheel. "Just trust me," he said.

Dom's scowl deepened, but he finally did as asked, popping open the door and dragging the duffel with him as he slid out. His gaze caught on Letty's cross as he moved, still hanging from the rearview mirror; he snagged it with a swift hand as his boots crunched into the dry grass of the highway verge.

Brian got out of the other side and shut the door gently, then took a few steps back to give the Charger plenty of room to move. "Dom," he said, instinctively using what he thought of as his cop voice: lethally serious, so there'd be no mistaking what came next. "I'd like to reintroduce you to your car."

At that cue, the Charger shifted a little on its wheels- then _stood_, metal shifting in a noisy clanking whirlwind of parts that lasted for several endless, amazing seconds. Brian had only seen it a few times, and most of those back in Mission City; he watched the transformation with a soaring sense of wonder and pride, then reached out when the last part shifted into place to pat Bestia on the looming axle of its nearest thigh.

"Dominic Toretto, meet Bestia. Bestia, meet Dom," he explained, grinning over at the open-mouthed form of the other driver. "I told you about him. He's the one you belong to."

Bestia commented on that with a step to the side, the edge of the asphalt shoulder crumbling under its tread as it moved closer to Brian. It was still so young, weeks old and largely inexperienced; but it would learn. They had nothing but time and the open road in front of them.

"Oh, don't be shy," he chided it, patting again. "I'm not just going to abandon you. We _both_ belong to him, remember?"

"Do you," Dom breathed, the words a low, barely audible rumble as he shifted his focus from the looming bipedal form back to Brian.

His pupils were blown, wide and dark and fixed on Brian's face, and Brian felt a sudden, crawling unease up his spine as his smile slid off his face. That wasn't really the reaction he'd been expecting. Though he didn't really know what he _had_ been expecting. "Yeah, so. I'm sorry...?"

He didn't have a chance to say anything else, though, to attempt to finish an apology or explanation: because Dom _moved_, lunging toward him suddenly, pushing him back against Bestia's thigh. Brian felt his back hit metal- then jerked as another sudden succession of loud crunching and shifting sounds replaced rods and wires with the smooth panel of the Charger's rear door. Bestia had retransformed. And Brian found himself trapped between it and Dom, arms like tree branches pressed into the metal on either side of his shoulders, bare, tanned chest rubbing sweat against his tee, boots bracketing Brian's battered Converse.

"You're _sorry_?" Dom chuckled, incredulously, from mere inches away, breath fanning over Brian's mouth. "You fucking resurrected my _car_. You gave it a _name_, and you broke me off that bus, and you stand here trying to tell me you're sorry?"

Brian swallowed, heart pounding double-time in his chest, and suppressed a groan as Dom's proximity started prompting the inevitable reaction. "Do you want me to be?" he asked, unable to stop himself from reaching out and sliding his hands down Dom's bare flanks.

"As if you ever let me tell you what to do anyway," Dom murmured, then pushed those last few inches closer, taking Brian's mouth like a starving man presented with a four-course meal. Brian found himself grinding against the offered thigh, every inch of his skin on fire, about half a minute from coming in his pants, and from what he could tell Dom was in no better shape.

Mia had been right, he thought vaguely, when Dom finally backed off a few seconds later, biting at his lower lip as he pulled away.

"Tell me I'm reading this wrong, Brian," he said, panting harshly under the baking sun.

Brian snorted, then grinned at him, reckless with resurging joy. "Nah, man. Don't tell me you didn't see it coming."

"You, maybe," Dom shook his head. "But this...?" he started to gesture past Brian to the car, then did a double-take, eyes widening once more. "You weren't kidding when you said 'change of camouflage', were you? Damn, O'Conner."

Brian turned his head, then patted the door at the sight before him. Bestia, whose name meant Beast in Italian, had followed their previously discussed program and shifted into a slightly less obvious version of itself: one gun-metal grey Charger, minus the blower and the shiny, reflective paintjob.

"Yeah, so get yours in gear before Mia starts wondering where the hell we are," he said, coming back to himself enough to check his watch. "Cops'll be here any minute now. We'll have to finish this later."

"Oh, we'll finish _something_, all right," Dom promised him, eyes glittering.

* * *

><p>Later, he'll have to leave Dom behind for a couple of weeks- coaxing Mia's Nissa into its first transformation while he trusts Bestia to look after Dom- and they'll run into trouble with Vince in Rio, drawing the law back down on their tracks.<p>

Later still, Mia will announce that she's pregnant, and complicate their world by several more degrees.

But all through the chaos that follows, car chases, shootouts, reunions, insane heists and a bastard in a Gurkha who damn near kills Bestia all over again, Brian O'Conner will hold that image in the back of his mind: Dominic Toretto, half-dressed and _wanting_, at the beginning of the rest of their lives.

-x-


	2. The Right of All Sentient Beings

**Title**: The Right of All Sentient Beings

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Rating**: T

**Spoilers**: Fast Five (2011); Transformers (Bay-verse) fusion

**Summary**: _"En-bee-whats?" Vince objected. "Are you saying he was in some kind of government experiment?"_ 7000 words, Brian/Dom.

**Notes**: Follows "Waking the Beast". Missing and/or altered scenes tucked into the plot of Fast Five, a continuation of the meme prompt, "Transformers crossover, slowly bringing the car to life". Title's a TF07 quote. There will probably be a third chapter, eventually.

* * *

><p>"So, we haven't had much of a chance to talk since we all met up again," Brian said, finally biting the bullet and opening the conversation.<p>

He'd been so fucking relieved to see Dom standing next to Vince when the side of that train had torn open to reveal the heist crew; two weeks had been a lot of time to be out of touch under the circumstances. There'd been no time to savor the moment, though; before he'd even finished explaining why he'd brought Mia out on a job despite Dom's orders to lay low, Vince's friends had started throwing sketchy vibes, and they'd been running one way or another ever since.

Dom took a pull from his bottle, then looked over at him, leaning against the porch rail in the sticky, still-warm air of the late Rio evening. He looked thoughtful; which could be a good sign or a bad sign, considering how much there'd been to think about since the last time they were alone together.

"You and Mia," he said slowly, as though testing the sound of the words.

"Yeah." Brian winced a little, glancing in through the barred window where his sort-of-ex girlfriend curled in a chair, dozing with a tiny little O'Conner growing inside her. "It's- complicated. We talked about us while you were in county lockup; she pretty much told me she knew she wasn't the one whose future I was planning, and that she'd rather be my friend than the bitter other woman."

Dom's eyebrows arched up a little at that. "You mean-?"

Brian snorted. "Apparently I was pretty fucking obvious about it," he said, taking a pull of his own beer to avoid looking Dom in the eyes at that admission. "She told me she wouldn't kick me out of bed, though, in the meantime; and I guess at some point we must have fucked up the protection."

"And how do you feel about that?" Dom asked, still so careful. Brian already knew how _he_ felt about the increasing size of the family; the surprised, open smile and the warm three-way hug at the foot of the favela had been a pretty big clue. But he was giving nothing away about his feelings for _Brian_, and what the situation with Mia might mean for what had started between them in the California desert.

He took a careful, shaky breath, and asked a tangential question, trying to divert the moment of truth a little longer. "Dom, what do you remember about your father?"

That question, surprisingly, coaxed another genuine grin out of Dom; the last time they'd talked about his dad they'd done so over the Charger, back before she'd been Bestia, in the garage of the house in Echo Park. The story had been a wrenching one; it had explained a lot about Dom to Brian, and broken through the wall of impartiality he'd tried to hold up between his real identity and the life of Brian Earl Spilner. Sometime over the last six years, Dom must've come to better terms with the memories.

He talked about Sunday barbecues, and about a hard working man that still had time for his children, nostalgia curling around the edges of his smile. It made Brian wonder what Dom's life would have been like if that car wreck had never happened; if he'd have joined the official racing world himself, and never crossed the path of Officer O'Conner. Or maybe, if Brian and Rome had straightened up rather than splitting to pursue the paths of law and property crime- maybe they _all_ would have met on the stock car circuit. His heart twisted a little at the thought.

But there was no point in might've beens. Only what will be's.

"See, that's just it," he tried to explain. "I don't know shit about my dad."

Dom let him go on a moment more, rambling around his fears that he might make a terrible parent, then interrupted, gaze intent and sure. "You ain't going to be like that, Brian," he said, firmly.

Something in Brian's back that had been wound tight ever since Mia's announcement loosened a little at that. He _did_ want to be a dad; and for it to happen after he'd basically given up the idea of it was kind of amazing. It was just that the circumstances were a _little_ nonstandard, even for their crazy lives. "So you're not going to break my neck for knocking her up when I'd rather have been knocking boots with her brother?" he quipped, only half-teasing.

Dom snorted at that, then set down his bottle and approached slowly across the length of the porch. Brian settled his weight more thoroughly against the plaster behind him, then spread his legs a little to accept Dom's solid frame as it pressed into him and set his own bottle on the window ledge in favor of wrapping a fist up in Dom's muscle shirt.

"I've seen you with Bestia and Nesso," Dom rumbled as he lined himself up against the stiffening ridge in Brian's jeans. "So I know you can do the dad thing with _cars_. A kid at least has less moving parts. And I said I'd break your neck if you broke her _heart_."

"Yeah?" Brian breathed against his mouth, shifting his hips against Dom's to sweeten the friction.

"I'm thinking that's only ever going to happen if you leave," Dom explained, dropping a biting kiss against Brian's exposed collarbone. "Woman knows her own mind; anyone with eyes can see she's happy. Not perfect, maybe, but happy. And you ain't going to leave. Are you, O'Conner."

Brian tilted his head back and groaned. There really was only one appropriate response to _that_.

The rest of the conversation could come later. _After_ they did.

* * *

><p>Mia smiled wistfully at them the next morning, eyes darting between them as though drinking in their faces. She still seemed so pleased to see them both together, regardless of the shifting relationships between the three of them; sometimes Brian forgot in the immediacy of everything going on that she'd been alone for the better part of five years while he'd been learning the secrets of Sector Seven and Dom had been pulling crazy shit south of the border trying to outrun boredom. She'd been the responsible one of the family all her life, but especially during those isolated years under police scrutiny, and she seemed so <em>unburdened<em> to have shed that role at last. He'd feel guiltier for dragging her permanently into the life if she didn't seem so glad to be there.

She made a face at the remnants of the greasy breakfast they'd put together, though, and shook her head at him, a little green around the gills. "I'm thrilled, really," she said, "but seriously, if you guys ever decide you want to mix genes again, one of _you_ is going to have to carry the baby."

Dom's expression at that was a sight to behold. Brian chuckled, then got up to give her a good morning kiss on the cheek, and ambled over to brace a shoulder against Dom's where he was holding up the wall. "So what's the plan?" he asked. "You know we can't keep running. How do we get out of this?"

"We use this," Dom said, pulling Reyes' confiscated computer chip from his pocket. He turned it over in his fingers, then held it out toward Brian- but Brian shook his head, holding out a cautionary hand.

"Better not, man; you keep hold of it. That thing's pretty damned small; I don't even want to know what might happen if I charged it by accident." He'd seen what even the tiniest devices could turn into in the Sector Seven lab under the Hoover Dam; he doubted anything created by personal touch would be that antisocial, but he couldn't guarantee it would be useful for its original purpose anymore.

Dom frowned, then tucked the chip away again. "Gotta get a better handle on that, Brian."

He ducked his head and nodded in response. "It's leveled off, pretty much; it's not going away, but it's not getting stronger any more, either. And it still takes awhile to do anything to a car. But the energy's pretty damn responsive to emotion; that's the part I'm having trouble controlling. I can keep my shit together 'til we're free of this, I just don't want to take unnecessary chances, you know?"

"Yeah, that's you all over, drawing the line at unnecessary chances," Mia spoke up, laughter in her voice. "You know, Jesse would have said you'd been blessed by the car gods. _I_ can still hardly believe any of it's real."

"Don't say that around Nesso, you'll hurt her feelings," Brian grinned, acknowledging the hit. He'd coaxed the NSX into the less conspicuous form of a '72 Skyline for the drive through South America, but she'd kept the initial name, an Italian word courtesy of Mia that signified a connection or link.

Dom rolled his eyes, nudging his shoulder against Brian's, the solidity of his body a warm anchor along Brian's side. "Not caution, just sense. Not that we're known for that, either." He chuckled. "Or that it's even the craziest thing about you, O'Conner."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Brian smiled, elbowing back. Then he turned the conversation back to the original topic. He had a pretty good idea what was on Dom's mind: a hundred million could buy a _lot_ of vacation insurance. Passports, new histories, the works. "We do this thing, we're going to need a team, you know; even I'm not crazy enough to think we can take all that with just the two of us."

"The three of us," Mia insisted, firming her jaw at the exclusion.

"The two of us _out in the open_," Brian countered; he didn't even need to look at Dom to know her brother would be in full agreement. Mia was tough, but her being out there would fuck with both of their protective instincts, even if she wasn't pregnant, even with Nesso to guard her. "You can investigate things for us, coordinate, but you've been in enough danger already since we got here."

Mia looked from his face to Dom's, then sighed at whatever she saw there and gave them a rueful smile. "All right. But if you try to send me somewhere safer, I'll castrate the both of you."

"Understood," Dom rumbled, tipping his head to her.

"So." That settled, Brian crossed his arms, eyeing Dom speculatively. "Let's run this down. Who else would you say we need?"

* * *

><p>It was excellent to see Rome and Tej again; Brian had emailed both of them once or twice, made a few phone calls while he was undercover, but he'd had to keep it pretty minimal overall while he'd been with Sector Seven. The secretive government group had been <em>extremely<em> insular- which he had known to expect going in, given how little his father had been around when he'd been growing up- and the last thing he'd needed was any of his new superiors questioning his commitment. Rome hadn't liked that. But at least he'd handled it better than when Brian went to the Academy.

He seemed to be handling the Dom thing okay, too, once they got past the initial establishing of dominance phase. Watching Rome smart off at his partner, and Dom just coolly sidestepping the whole Alpha bullshit to rope him back in with a wry comment, was nearly as exhilarating as a race; he'd never expected the two vastly different segments of his life to ever meet, much less to get along. Or maybe they just hadn't been all that different, after all; it was the cop phase there in the middle that really stood out, if he looked back at it all objectively.

And that reminded him of something else he'd been meaning to ask his oldest friend.

"Hey, man, you got a cousin named Epps?" he asked when he and Rome found a moment to talk alone.

"Epps?" Rome frowned at him, lounging back against the leather couch someone had thoughtfully dragged inside the old factory building. "Yeah, a whole lot of 'em, on my momma's side. Not close, but I've met a few. You run into one of 'em somewhere?"

Brian snorted, remembering the soldier who'd inadvertently animated a pop machine in front of him. They hadn't exchanged more than a few words in the convoy from the dam to the city or during the running fight, but Brian remembered him pretty clearly given the resemblance. Until the uniform had registered, he'd thought the man _was_ Rome.

"Yeah. Tech Sergeant in the Air Force. I didn't catch his first name."

"_Bobby_?" Rome straightened up at that, an affronted expression on his face. "And where in the _hell_ did you meet Bobby Epps while you was undercover? I thought you were doing more drug cartel shit, Bri. Bobby is the damn _good_ cousin my momma always throws in my face; you can't tell me he was involved in anything like that."

"Nah, don't worry about that, cuz. He's a goddamn hero, though more than _that_ I can't tell you. But I thought he was you there for a few minutes. Kind of threw me," Brian grinned at him.

"Huh," Rome said, mollified. "_Still_ the good twin, then. Damn. He recognize you if he saw you again? 'Cause I'm going to try and get him to narc on you next time I hear from him, don't think I won't."

"Good luck with that," Brian chuckled. Odds were Sergeant Epps had earned himself a promotion or two and a ticket over to NEST; Rome would never get anything out of him about Mission City or the NBEs. Far as Brian had been able to determine, pretty much everyone in government employ close enough to NBE One to pick up a tingle when it went down had been drafted, and most of the civilians too; the news stories about crazy robot pranks had started to die down. Brian had just fallen through the cracks, and then bolted from L.A. before anyone could clue in and pluck up the loose thread.

Rome frowned. "And why the hell can't you tell me, anyway? It's not like you still work for five-oh."

"There's secrets, and then there's secrets, Rome," Brian shook his head. "Trust me, this is bigger than national security- if I talked, and someone found out, there'd be a lot worse coming down on us than there is already." The thought had occurred to him that the DSS team surely already on their asses might not be the only government hunters out to get them, and the idea was sobering.

Rome was the only family he had left from before Los Angeles, Take One, though; he did deserve to know that something _had_ changed with Brian, at least. Enough had come between them already. "One thing I can _show_ you, though."

"Yeah? And what's that?" Rome arched his eyebrows expectantly.

"You got a cell phone on you?"

"A burner, yeah. So?"

"Hand it over, brah," Brian told him, making a 'gimme' gesture with one hand. "You're not going to believe this shit unless you see it first-hand."

"It ain't an iPhone or anything," Rome cautioned, wearing a skeptical expression as he plucked a compact flip-phone from his left jeans pocket and handed it over. "Don't know what you think you can do with it that I ain't seen before."

"Shh," Brian replied absently, cupping the phone in the palm of one hand. Then he deliberately cleared his mind: picturing a wide golden beach lapped by low, curling waves the blue-green of summer. Warm sunshine beat down from above as he sped along a highway overlooking the scene in that sweet silver Skyline the cops had shorted out from under him in Miami.

There was another person with him in the car in that image: a calm, solid presence, soaking up the scene in quiet companionship. That had been his idea of peace, of 'anywhere but here', for years; the form in the other seat had changed shape from time to time, but he'd always been there, hand on Brian's thigh, projecting easy comfort. The visualization was Brian's quickest route to _zen_, and the best coherent channel he'd found for the so-called Cube energy that had sunk its roots under his skin.

Probably not coincidentally, he'd been feeling a _lot_ less conflicted about his life since he'd started working on Bestia. He may have thrown his career under that bus when he'd pulled Dom off of it, but in every other respect, he thought he'd won more than he'd lost in the exchange.

"Shit, Bri. Holy fucking _shit_, what the hell did you just do!" Rome yelped.

Brian opened his eyes and smiled, watching the little metal critter uncurl on his palm like a sleepy kitten, blinking tiny green bulbs at him. "Hey, there," he said, then looked up. "Hey, Rome, hold out your hand. I want to remind him he's _yours_ before he fixates on me; Dom's car took a little coaxing."

"He's- _what_? What is- I can't believe- you did that to a _car_?" Rome flailed, cringing backward against the couch.

"Might've known _that_ would be what got your attention," Brian chuckled. "C'mon, man. Hold out your hand!"

Rome stared at him wide-eyed a minute longer, then edged forward again and did as Brian asked, muttering under his breath about crazy-ass white boys and fucking metal spiders. He softened just a little when Brian sent the transformed phone tiptoeing tiny blunted claw after claw onto his palm, though; it tapped carefully at his lifeline, then turned to rub its segmented spine against the callous at the base of his thumb, and a wary smile broke over his face.

"Brah, did you just make me an iFriend?" he teased, carefully holding his hand level.

Brian knew a moniker that would stick when he heard one, and smirked. "Go on, ask him to turn back into a phone, and he will. _Should_ work more or less the same as before, except now when you're not using him he might crawl back out of your pocket to keep you company."

Rome reached carefully over with the fingertips of his other hand, brushing against the small 'bot, and shook his head incredulously when it rolled over, grabbing at the pads of skin with its little wiry legs. "Brian says you know how to be a phone again?" he addressed it cautiously, then flinched when it stilled and began flipping and turning like a miniature metal cyclone. "That is some crazy shit, right there!"

"I know, right?" Brian told him, still smirking as Rome carefully eyed the reformed phone.

"Did I just see what I _think_ I just saw?" Tej breathed from behind them.

Brian looked up to see a stunned look on his technically-minded friend's face; Han, standing next to Tej, seemed considerably more composed, but Brian noted his fingers had frozen in his ever-present bag of chips as though he'd forgotten they were there.

Brian winced. He'd forgotten _they_ were in a public space and that the conversation might not stay private. No help for it, though, but to brazen it out. "Y'all heard about Mission City, right?"

"Rumors only," Gisele commented, sidling up next to Han. "The disturbance there took place while I was still working for Braga; the reports he had from his men in the city were very fragmented." She wore a curious, evaluating expression; watching her, Brian was reminded of the day he and Dom had met her, auditioning for a place as one of the drug lord's drivers. Luckily, she'd turned out to be principled in her own way, and as susceptible to Dom's magnetic lure as all the rest of them.

"Alien robots or experimental technology," Han shrugged, cool visibly settling back over him as he glanced Gisele's way. He did the snowman routine even better than Brian did, for all he didn't so much look the part. "There are half a dozen urban legends already, most of them a little on the fanciful side."

"You were there?" Rico put in, drifting over to the gathering group with Tego at his shoulder. He muttered something under his breath after that that sounded suspiciously like _estás loco_; Tego elbowed him for it and added, "You see any of them? Los coches fantasmas?"

So far, so good, Brian thought cautiously. "I was there," he nodded, then looked up past Rome to meet the knowing dark eyes of Dominic Toretto.

Dom crossed grease-smeared arms over his broad chest and gave a deliberate sidelong glance toward the corner where Bestia lurked, but Brian replied with a shake of his head. The Charger could wait for later. She and Nesso were an ace up their sleeves as things stood- a pair of young, vulnerable aces that he'd rather not expose to public scrutiny until the current chaos had been settled.

"I can do some things with energy and technology because of it," he continued. "Not controlled enough to take over the surveillance electronics or anything, but like a backup, if we ever need to just turn their systems against them. And I can tune the shit out of a car now, better than I ever could with just tools."

"No shit," Tej breathed, shaking his head before leaning over for a better look at Rome's newly named iFriend. "You ain't going to put that back in your pocket, are you? All them claws, just waiting to pop out and nudge around any old time it gets bored?"

Rome looked down at the front jeans pocket he'd taken it from, visibly measured its proximity to his groin, then gave Brian a dubious look. "Maybe it oughtta stay in my jacket from now on," he said.

Chuckles broke out around him as he tucked the phone away, and Brian shared another long, relieved look with Dom. One more hurdle out of the way, and more easily than he'd expected. He'd bet most of the team were still wary about what they'd just seen, but they were willing to accept it, and him, as an asset without any further argument- and really, that said it all.

Not just team: family. It was how Dom rolled, and something that Brian had really missed while he'd been gone.

* * *

><p>The other thing Brian had missed since ditching his badge for the second time- though really, it had been pretty unavoidable- was a car of his own. He'd wrecked the last two cars he'd had worth driving, and they'd both been courtesy of FBI impound for the Braga case; before that, he'd been all black suits and SUVs, five years of mom-mobile after government drone car. He could blend with that, as well as he could blend with anything else- but it had felt kind of like a straightjacket after awhile. He'd missed his old Skyline; hell, he'd even missed the Yenko he'd crashed into Carter Verone's yacht.<p>

He did have Nesso and Bestia, of course; but they weren't really _his_, even if they did still look to him for attention as much as Mia and Dom. So when they got to the phase of the setup where they needed cars to test their approach to the police station Reyes had stowed his money in, Brian was more than behind the acquisition plan. He grinned over at Dom as the pair of them rolled up on the Rio version of a very familiar scene- flashy cars, flashier girls, and strutting peacocks displaying their ownership of same- and started eyeing the offerings for one he could seriously sink some love into.

There was no question in his mind that Dom would win whichever one he chose. Brian was better in traffic, but Dom was the acknowledged master of the quarter mile, and even before Bestia's upgrades she'd never seen a pair of taillights. As she was now, nothing from this Earth could catch her if she and Dom decided not to be caught. All Brian had to do was _choose_ one, and it would be his.

His gaze caught on a little blue Porsche GT RS3, and he chose.

Luckily for them, the owner was proud enough to put his pink slip where his mouth was when Dom took the man's challenge. He seemed kind of reluctantly thrilled by it, in fact; he'd raced the infamous Dominic Toretto, after all, adding a new chapter to his _own_ legend as well as Dom's. The street scene of Rio would be talking about the team's blitz through town for years, Brian had no doubt, and Diogo would be able to say he'd raced the renowned fugitive first.

Not last, though. Because in the end, the gorgeous little car still wasn't fast enough to hack their mocked-up track and they had to go back for several more. It was like taking candy from babies. The multiple trips to Rio's racing scene offered Brian more than enough opportunities to run his hands over attractive precision machines.

That included one particular organic form amidst the vehicular beauties. There were enough of them staying at the makeshift headquarters by that point that alone time was at a premium, and Dom was a little reserved about putting on a show for their friends. Brian didn't blame him; Letty climbing Dom in the garage was one thing, forgetting where he was with Brian could risk some pretty unpleasant reactions. He was pretty sure they weren't fooling most of them, though. When they rolled back with each new expensive car a little flushed and endorphin-high after a longer lag than could be accounted for by traffic or the race itself, they caught their share of amused looks, at least as many as Han and Gisele or the distinctly old-couple-y Rico and Tego.

The cars were the important thing, as far as the group was concerned. No else one touched the Porsche after Brian's first few laps with her, trying to wring more agility or speed out of the newer prizes. He kept coming back to her himself though, admiring her lines after he tested each of the others, to give her a searching touch. Whichever car he picked could decide on its own final form when he was done waking it, but that didn't change the fact that each one started out with a distinct personality- and he just couldn't help but appreciate the potential he sensed in her.

He wouldn't be able to spare her much until the job was done. But he felt better for having chosen. And he made sure Dom, Bestia and Nesso all knew it, too. When they left, she'd be going with them.

* * *

><p>That day was destined to be a little further in the future than they'd thought, though.<p>

Dom finally lit on the idea of using police cruisers to sneak by the station cameras; Brian won three million extra bucks off Dom, Rome, and Han in a four-Charger race while picking them up; and the team welcomed Vince back into the fold. The news about the Toretto-to-be drew some raised eyebrows and a raft of bad jokes from Rome, but just as much celebration, and they were one hour away from freedom when Hobbs unexpectedly flipped their transmitter and found them.

Half the team was already out, finding their positions for the heist. But Brian, Mia, Vince and Dom were all still there, boxed into the factory by Hobbs' arriving team, while the lead agent himself barreled right into the factory from another opening. Before anyone could react- before Bestia could transform to defend herself- the Gurkha LAPV plowed right into her, jamming her up against the wall.

Dom went straight for him, part distraction and part rage as Brian and Vince tried to get Mia to safety. Hobbs' subordinates caught them, though, trapping them halfway across the building where they couldn't see the fight. They could hear it, though. Sounds carried well in the concrete-floored space: the thuds of fists hitting flesh, the roars of angry voices, the crashes of bodies slamming through walls and destroying old, flimsy furniture. And beyond them all, stressed whining metallic sounds echoed from what could only be Bestia trying to extricate herself from where she'd been pinned.

It took a moment for all of it to sink in, but once it did, that was it; Brian felt as though a relay in his mind had clicked. He was done cooperating; he lunged insistently toward the sounds, barely noticing the agents scrambling to contain him or Mia screaming his name. He'd barely made it more than a few steps, though, before Dom and Agent Hobbs crashed through the wall right in front of him, rolling across the stained concrete floor. They had blood on their faces and their knuckles; there was no way out of the trap, _Bestia was hurting_, and somehow Dom had got his hands on a wrench...

Raw terror and fury crackled out of Brian before it even registered that the energy building under his skin was more than just his own helpless anger.

"Jesus!" he heard the agent holding him choke as a flash of raw blue raised the hairs on Brian's arms.

He caught a brief impression of rapidly clicking metallic sounds, followed by the other agents starting to swear, but the only thing that really mattered to Brian in that second was that the man had _let him go_. He was off and sprinting the moment the agent's fingers fell away from his sleeve. Toward Dom, toward Bestia; toward the thinning hope that they could still make it out of there. Dom had dropped the wrench, staggering up and away from Hobbs; he briefly locked eyes with Brian as he ran toward him, expression echoing all the panic and helpless wrath Brian was feeling.

But in that moment of sympathetic resonance, both of them had stopped paying attention to Hobbs. And in that breath of time- two or three footfalls' worth across the filthy concrete, heartbeat double-timing in Brian's chest and air rasping in his throat- the agent seized his opportunity and surged to his own feet. Brian caught sight of a massive tattooed elbow approaching in his peripheral vision about a half a second before he felt the impact- and then he was seeing nothing at all.

* * *

><p>"Ow. <em>Fuck<em>."

Brian groaned as his brain came back online in fits and starts, head throbbing in time with the bump of the wheels over the cobbles of the road. Someone had put him in a vehicle while he was out, and from the echoing throb in his wrists he was guessing he'd been cuffed as well. Hobbs had won.

"Brian! Are you okay?"

The warm, rounded shape under his right ear shifted, and Brian realized he'd been leaning over Mia's shoulder. He blinked slowly, squinting against the light as he straightened, and glanced around to find himself in the back of Hobbs' assault vehicle of a truck. Mia was seated next to him, and Dom and Vince were likewise cuffed on the opposite side of the cab. Vince was looking as disgruntled as he had most of the time since Brian's arrival in Rio; Dom wasn't bleeding any more, but he looked a little pale, half wrung out after the fight and clenching his jaw as he met Brian's gaze. Hobbs himself was guarding them, with one of his agents in the front seat and that cop who'd showed up at the meet wearing Letty's cross riding shotgun. She was watching the lot of them, but mostly Dom, her expression conflicted.

Brian remembered that feeling. What the hell was it with Dom and cops, anyway? There was no point being jealous, though; even if Dom eyed her back, she wasn't a threat. Nor was she family. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and answered Mia's question.

"Yeah, for a certain value of 'okay'. What happened?"

"You turned Chato's gun into a homicidal robot, that's what the fuck happened," Hobbs growled at him, dark eyes boring fiercely into Brian's face. "You were at Mission City, weren't you?"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Vince griped, staring suspiciously between the pair of them. "And what do you mean, he did it? The buster didn't even touch the damn thing."

"He didn't need to," Hobbs replied, grimly. "He was touching Chato. Where are your gloves, boy?" he barked at Brian. "Or didn't you get the fancy Allspark training? Shit; you're not just a wanted fugitive, you're a goddamn threat to national security. Why the hell isn't any of this in your file?"

Training? They had training for his new 'talent' now? Brian raised his eyebrows at that; he'd have to have Tej... well, if he wasn't on his way to do serious federal time he'd have sicced Tej all over that line of thought. Records had to exist online somewhere.

"Five years of deep cover," he smirked at the agent. "I know _that's_ in my file. Where'd you think they put me, a beach somewhere? Not my fault the details got lost when they tried to do a quick fill and cover on the disaster. How the hell do _you_ know about the Allspark?"

"_You_ were in Sector Seven," Hobbs said, deeply skeptical.

"Yeah. I had a 'do anything you want and get away with it' badge there for awhile, too. Scary thought, isn't it?" His mood was starting to lift even through the nauseating headache; it might not be the healthiest thing in the world to needle Hobbs just then, but it sure as shit _felt_ satisfying.

"Why were you even in Los Angeles? Why didn't you get outprocessed with the rest of Banacek's suits?" Hobbs shook his head incredulously. "I had to chase a couple of them that did a runner, and I was briefed on the basics after I brought them back. I have to say, though, I didn't half believe it until I saw what you did to Chato's gun. Next thing you'll tell me that precious Charger of Toretto's was one of those NBEs; it certainly kept twitching enough after I smashed it."

"En-bee-_whats_?" Vince objected. "Are you saying he was in some kind of government experiment?" He frowned directly at Brian. "What the hell did you bring down on us?"

Dom kicked his old friend in the shin at that, though his jaw was also working in anger at Hobbs' taunting. "_Vince_. Don't get your shorts in a knot. Mia and I already knew."

"Color me unsurprised," Hobbs grunted, turning away from them to glare through the window. "Why _not_ add two felony counts of disclosure of classified secrets to your record?"

"Make that eight," Brian informed him with a snort, remembering Rome's iFriend. "If you're talking about show and tell. I never told them any details, though; I'm not that much of a masochist."

Mia snorted at that- but before she could add anything else, Hobbs interrupted suddenly, lurching toward the front of the Gurkha.

"Ambush!" he yelled- just as the SUV in front of them jolted backward in an explosion of flame.

Adrenaline sharpened Brian's reactions again, distracting him from the continued throb at his temple as Hobbs and his agent bolted from the Gurkha. They were firing up at the rooftops, and the rooftops were firing back; more of Reyes' men surrounding them, out for revenge against at least half, and probably all, of the convoy's passengers. Neves seemed to get that- that there were an awful lot of them, and that she'd be on the chopping block too if Hobbs went down- because after a minute's pleading she pulled her knife and cut through their flex-cuffs. It was going to be too late, though; Brian knew even as the plastic binding fell away from his wrists that the goon with the launcher had to have at least one more rocket, and that it couldn't possibly take him _that_ long to reload it.

"Guns, guns!" he chanted, scrabbling for the rest of the arsenal stored in the truck as fast as he could.

"Shotgun, Brian!" Dom prompted him- then swore, diving for the door as another cacophony of sound erupted outside.

It wasn't a rocket, though, contrary to Brian's expectations. He scrambled for the back with two weapons in hand- an automatic rifle for himself, and the shotgun Dom had asked for, jamming his shoulder against Vince's in his haste to get free- and hit pavement just in time to catch sight of a swift-moving black shape barreling by.

"Nesso!" Mia screamed from behind them.

Then the expected smoke trail leapt from the rooftop- just in time to impact against _another_ fast-moving machine, this one running awkwardly past them on clawed metal feet. With a god-awful clang, Bestia flew at least dozen yards backward to collapse in the street again, chest panels dented and smoking. She wasn't down for good yet, though; she started picking herself up again haphazardly, at least two of her limbs still twisted from Hobbs' earlier attempt to destroy her.

"Bestia!" Brian yelled, horrified at the damage she'd taken.

But there was no time to see to her; one of the rooftop soldiers was making motions as though he had hand grenades to throw, and Brian dragged his attention away from Dom's car to put as many bullets as he could through the fucker. All of Hobbs' men were down, at least two of them dead, and Hobbs himself had been flattened by the blast wave when Bestia took the rocket hit in front of the convoy's second SUV; if Neves hadn't freed the team, they would _all_ be dead.

Reyes' men couldn't be killed hard enough for that, as far as Brian was concerned. From the moment Dom had cautioned Mia on the train that something might be up, through the crazy fight on the heist truck, getting chained up over a sheet of roofing plastic, running from attackers over the roofs of the favela, and Vince rescuing Mia in the market, Rio's most powerful man had done his best to really ruin their trip to Brazil, and Brian was fucking tired of it.

* * *

><p>"I'll ride with you, Toretto," Hobbs said some time later, after they'd temporarily cleared the street of their opponents, sent Hobbs' surviving pair of agents off to the hospital in Nesso, and gunned the Gurkha through the blockade with Bestia staggering at their heels. "At least until we kill that son of a bitch. <em>If<em> you make sure and keep that _thing_ away from me. It belongs at Diego Garcia with the others of its kind, not in human society."

He pointed at the slumped form of the damaged robot, who was making groaning sounds with her radio while Brian tried to free some of the twisted shards of metal jammed into her left-side joints.

"She's not an NBE, you know. Nor's Nesso; you can stop worrying she dragged your men off somewhere to dispose of them," Brian said, tiredly. "They're NBTs. Homegrown."

"Whatever," Vince snorted, leaning against one of the tables with a bloody scrap of cloth wrapped around his bicep. One of the gunmen had winged him in the fight, the only human injury among Dom's team, thank God. "They saved our asses out there. They're creepy as fuck, but they're on our side, and that's enough for me. That one good to help me guard Mia while y'all go for the vault?"

"You're _all_ crazy sons of bitches," Hobbs said, shaking his head

.

"That we are, man, that we are," Roman sighed. "Aw, hell. Can't get much worse, I suppose."

Brian patted Bestia on the thigh, then stood and looked up. "So what's the plan, Dom?"

Dom nodded to him, eyes warm, as the others drew in close again. "All Reyes cares about is his money. We draw his money, we draw him."

* * *

><p>Family. It was what had brought the team to Rio; it was what scattered them again afterward, dispersing their hard-earned gains in twos and threes to all the corners of the world. They wouldn't draw official attention by staying together- but they'd always be ready to pull back together at the first summoning call.<p>

Brian, Mia and Dom found a place with lots of sun and no extradition, and after a cautious trip back to the favela Vince brought his wife and son to join them. They didn't all stay in the big, airy house all the time; but they never drifted very far apart, either. Dom found a garage to operate, and the rest of them spent lazy days assisting him with mods and repairs. Not much different from the way things had been six years before, if you discounted the language shift, the different makes and models of their customers, and the marks of age wearing on all of them. The absence of Jesse, Leon and Letty ached like a missing tooth, but Rosa and Nico were a welcome addition, and they'd put out feelers to find Leon.

Bestia's repairs had taken nearly as long as they had the last time, but more because she was as sore a patient as her driver, not from the severity of the damage- she was a lot tougher after her changes. She'd picked a Challenger shell, this time. Nesso was doing well, though she saw less action than she'd have liked since they'd settled. And Velocità had joined them. She'd settled on a silver Nissan GT-R form for the time being; she was a joy to drive, just as he'd imagined.

Brian knew one day he'd look up to find Rome's cousin the sergeant stepping out of a monster black truck, or Agent Hobbs rolling up with his team. But until that day came, he was happy.

_They_ were happy. They were free.

-x-


	3. Running Ain't Freedom

**Title**: Running Ain't Freedom

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Rating**: T

**Spoilers**: Fast Five (2011); Transformers (Bay-verse) fusion

**Summary**: _It was her. She was thinner in a way that spoke of a long recovery, bones prominent in her face and at her wrists, but the woman in the black motorcycle leathers was definitely Leticia Ortiz._ 9000 words.

**Notes**: Someone asked in a comment what Letty's status was in this FFxTF alterverse. Cue 9000 words of mostly conversation with a dash of Transformers for flavor! The character of Knockout, and the mention of the events in Rome, are a reference to the Alan Dean Foster Transformers tie-in novel set between movies: "The Veiled Threat".

* * *

><p>Brian had always known their time in paradise would eventually end. The lack of an extradition treaty between their new home and the U.S. could only protect against official inquiry, and no amount of money could cover all the <em>un<em>official ways their enemies might come for them. Their best bet for staying in one piece had always been to ghost along under the radar. Being noticed could only lead to being 'assisted' into a neighboring country by a persistent DSS agent, getting picked up by NEST troops, or being shot down by men loyal to one of the three drug lords they'd defeated between them.

Elena Neves had been pretty good about passing them any news that crossed her desk, and Tej kept an electronic eye on relevant web chatter. Sooner or later, though, that wasn't going to be enough. It didn't help that none of them were made to sit still, even Mia; if it hadn't been for the babies, they'd probably have found trouble again from sheer restlessness inside of six months. But for little Jesse Vincent O'Conner's sake, and for Nico, they'd made an honest try at the retiree lifestyle. No racing, the cars always cars where anyone else might see them, and they split their hours between the beach and the rundown garage they'd purchased.

Jesse had Brian's eyes, but his hair was as dark as his mother's, and he had the Toretto skin tone and attitude. The perfect addition to their little family, as far as Brian was concerned, and a bright spot in all of their lives. He was still only a few months old, though, when the odds finally caught up with them. Brian returned from a trip to the store with Mia to discover Dom brooding over the crib.

They'd seen Bestia out front, so they'd known Dom must've closed the garage and brought Jesse home early. That was unusual, but not necessarily alarming, so Mia had offered to put the groceries away while Brian went to check up on him, expecting news of a slow day or an infant illness. Instead, he found Jesse snuffling in his sleep, calm and happy as ever- and Dom obviously anything but, thunder building on his brow and a duffel bag packed at his feet.

Brian stood in the doorway of the nursery for a long moment, one hand resting on the knob and the other slowly making a fist at his side as he took in the scene. Dom had changed from the black muscle shirt and cargo shorts he'd worn that morning into a long-sleeved ribbed white tee over a pair of worn jeans; his silver necklace dangled from his right fist, and his leather jacket was folded over his duffel. As warm as the day was that could mean only one thing, and Brian took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

"How long do we have to pack?" he asked, quietly.

Dom flinched visibly as Brian's voice registered. He'd caught him by surprise- something that would never normally happen, and Brian's stomach sank further at the wild, pained look in his lover's eyes.

"Dom?" he prompted the other man again, alarmed.

Dom slowly shook his head, but there was no confusion there, nothing Brian could pick at, only firm refusal. "_We're_ not going anywhere," he said. "It ain't what you're thinking."

"But _you're_ going? What the hell, Dom?" Brian frowned at him. He let go the knob and walked further into the room, reaching instinctively for the other man- and froze, hands half-outstretched, when Dom took a deliberate step back out of his reach, reinforcing the nonverbal rejection.

"I'm not asking you to do this with me," Dom told him. "It's probably a trap. And even if it ain't, I'll have Hobbs on me before long. But I gotta see this through."

Brian stared at him, mind clicking through the possibilities. Dressed for a cooler climate, Dom wasn't headed for Rio- so it couldn't be anything to do with Vince, who'd taken Rosa and Nico back for a half-month visit to her parents. It couldn't be Leon, either; last word was he'd made his way to Tej's and was crashing with him and Rome until the boys came for their next visit. If _they'd_ been in trouble, Dom wouldn't shut him out. What other old business could Dom possibly see as _personal_ rather than something to take care of together? Did he have family still in L.A. that Brian didn't know about?

"Have to see _what_ through?" he asked, dropping his hands to his sides again. "Dom, your problems are my problems now. You know that."

Dom turned his face away, staring down into the crib at Jesse again, his expression conflicted. "It's Letty," he said, slowly.

Brian stiffened. That was one subject they hadn't really discussed since killing Fenix and putting Braga behind bars, one sore spot he'd done his best never to prod. Letty might not have been a hearts and flowers forever soul mate for Dom- he'd left her behind often enough, and spent enough time enjoying the attentions of others even when they were together- but he _had_ loved her, and they'd known each other as well as they'd known their own skins. First loves, best friends; the only person he'd let under his armor after Lompoc until Brian had walked into the family store in L.A. He'd grieve her loss forever, and Brian didn't blame him. He'd feel much the same if Rome had been murdered.

"I told you once, she was my friend, too," he said quietly. "I meant it, Dom. Whatever it is..."

Dom snorted at that, and a muscle jumped visibly in his jaw. "That's rich," he ground out. Then he turned back toward Brian, something dark and ugly in his expression that Brian hadn't seen there in years. He took a long step forward, and this time Brian gave way before him, deeply unsettled by the sheer furious _hurt_ pouring off him.

"As if you don't know. Why didn't you _tell_ me!"

Brian stumbled back another step, raising his hands defensively. "Tell you what, Dom?" he asked, desperately searching his mind for anything he could possibly have known that would prompt that kind of reaction. They'd never really discussed the weeks he'd worked with Letty... but _nothing_ had happened between the moment she'd appeared on his stoop and the last time she'd called him that could possibly have upset Dom so much.

"You _know_ what, Brian! Or should I say- Agent O'Conner? I had to hear it from Han! From _Han!_" He took another step, bringing up his hands to shove Brian back into the wall beside the doorway. "I thought you- I thought-" Dom broke off then, pounding his fists into the wall above Brian's shoulders before pulling back and shaking his head. "I don't goddamn know what I was thinking. _I trusted you, Brian._"

"Dom. Dom!" Brian was past alarmed by that point; watching Dom fracture without any clue to what was causing it was crushing the air out of him. He reached to grip Dom's shoulders again, squeezing tight to get the message through when Dom didn't flinch away a second time, and shook him slightly. "Hear _what_? You _know_ how far I've gone for you; how far I'm willing to go. I don't know what the fuck Han told you, but fuck _him_ if he thinks I'd _ever_ betray you."

Dom just glared back at him, breathing as hard as if he'd just run a race- but Brian kept staring back, and as the moment stretched out the tense lines in Dom's face and neck started to relax one by one. "I didn't believe it at first," he finally said, lowering his voice. He sounded bewildered now, but still hurt, as though someone had knifed him unexpectedly. "I don't _want_ to believe it. But he _saw_ her, Brian. At a club in Berlin. So you tell me what I'm supposed to believe."

"Saw who? _Letty_?" Brian's jaw dropped. "But that's not possible!"

"He wasn't the only one," Dom replied, grimly. "Gisele recognized her, too."

He didn't have to say how: Gisele had probably met Letty the same way she'd met them, setting up one of the races for Braga's alter ego and supposed lieutenant, Campos. Gisele hadn't known Han at the time, or any of the rest of Dom's team. So if they were _both_ sure of her identity...

Brian sucked in a ragged breath, feeling as gutted as Dom looked. "But it _can't_ be. I saw a body, Dom! They showed me a body. It was burned bad, I wasn't going to let Mia see her like that, but the height was right, and the hair- even the dog tags. I checked them to make sure. They were Letty's uncle's. I was her handler! How could they fake her death without telling me?"

"Exactly," Dom said quietly, and in that one word Brian could read everything that had been tearing him apart since the moment the phone call had come in.

Dimly, he became aware that he was shaking; fine tremors vibrated down his arms where he still gripped Dom's shoulders. In the background, fitful noises issued from the direction of Jesse's crib; their argument must have woken him, because Mia stood there now, baby clasped in her arms, shushing him urgently. Brian could spare them no attention, though; he felt as though he was standing on the edge of a cliff, the only thing between him and a long fall the fraying thread of Dom's faith in him. Somewhere under it all he was angry, too, that Dom doubted him- but that didn't matter. The truth was more important. _Letty_ was more important.

"I didn't know," he said, slowly letting go to brush his hands downward over the planes of Dom's chest. "I would never keep something like that a secret from you. Even then, when I had every reason to believe you still hated me for being a cop. She was the closest thing to family I'd seen in _five years_, and the only thing she wanted was for you to come home. I swore on her grave I'd see it through for her, and I did that, Dom. I wouldn't have cared if she was in witness protection; I'd have brought her along when I broke you off that bus, and you know it."

It was there, in the desert, that he and Dom had taken the first step past friendship. To think that all that time, Letty had been alive- that she was _still_ alive, and hadn't bothered to contact any of them- he didn't know _what_ to think.

It would hurt like hell if he lost what he had with Dom now, but as long as he was still family- as long as he still had Mia and Jesse- he could survive. And he wouldn't give him up without a fight.

Dom stared at him for another long moment, searching his face intently. The tension between them ratcheted up several more degrees as he stood there, not speaking... until he finally let out a long breath and bowed his head, resting it against Brian's shoulder. "I know it," he agreed, dully.

Brian slid his arms around Dom's back, resting his cheek against the side of Dom's shaved skull, and just breathed with him a moment. He was still too tense to feel relieved, but some of the dread was draining out of him at that gesture. "So, how long do I have to pack?" he murmured, again.

Dom huffed against his shoulder at that, too worn to chuckle. "Buster," he said. Then he pulled back, swiping a hand across his eyes, leaving a faint patch of dampness on Brian's shirt that neither of them deigned to address. "Plane leaves in three hours. It's a two hour drive, and there'll be room for one of the girls in cargo if she crunches up tight like a shipment of machinery."

Brian took an unsteady breath. "Velocità," he decided. "She's smaller and more agile; and the others won't argue, since Bestia was there for the bus and she and Nesso both helped in Rio."

"I suppose I don't get any say in this?" a third voice broke in.

Both of them turned to face Mia simultaneously, guilty expressions on their faces at having forgotten her even temporarily. "Mia..."

"Nevermind. I understand," she said, still bouncing Jesse carefully against her shoulder. Then she stepped forward to lay a palm briefly against Dom's face, tears shining in her eyes. "Find her," she said, then switched her focus to Brian, pulling him to her until their foreheads were pressed together. "And protect each other, you hear me?" she added, fiercely. "Bring him back safe."

"I promise," Brian murmured back around the lump in his throat. Then he kissed her forehead, bent to kiss Jesse's cheek, and stroked a rough thumb over his son's tiny palm. Little fingers grasped reflexively at him, then let go as Jesse shifted sleepily. Brian smiled faintly, then broke away while he still could.

* * *

><p>He was unsurprised to find all three NBTs- Non-Biological Terrestrials- in front of the house when he and Dom left fifteen minutes later. Bestia and Nesso were in their bipedal forms, flanking the low-slung blue shape of Velocità; the little Porsche had resumed her original make and model for the trip.<p>

"Y'all heard?" Dom asked, nodding to his transformed Challenger.

Bestia blinked her optics in acknowledgement. "Brian explained to Nesso and I about your former mate, after Vince mentioned her in Rio. You all thought she'd been deactivated. But the one named Han says she isn't, so you're going to see if it's true."

All three were capable of talking in any form now- between their own understanding of their forms, Brian's gift, and some creative thinking on Dom's part, they'd finally managed to adapt Cybertronian vocalizer schematics to work with Earth-only materials- but tended to prefer 'robot' mode when interacting with their drivers. Brian had wondered from time to time if the same held true for the original NBEs, or if his three did it because they had been 'born' among humans. Maybe someday he'd find a way to ask without having to worry about their being locked up for study.

"Will you bring her back here if you find her?" Nesso added, bending down to one knee so she could look Dom more or less in the eye. "You're not going to leave us, are you?" She turned her head toward the house, glancing toward Mia and Jesse; their sensors were powerful enough they could still pick up movement and sound through the intervening walls and plaster.

Dom met her optics with a steady gaze, taking the Skyline's concern seriously. Nesso was technically Mia's car, just as Bestia was Dom's and Velocità was Brian's, but they were all three proprietary over the family in general and didn't like anything that upset its balance. They _really_ weren't fond of Hobbs, and they treasured Jesse as if he were the Allspark. "I won't make any promises," he said, "but I don't plan on leaving, don't worry."

Brian winced at that, but didn't comment, walking closer to lean against Nesso's oversized metal knuckles where she braced herself against the cracked asphalt. The familiar connection leapt to life at the touch of fingertips against warm steel; Brian gave her just enough energy to convey his intent to bring Dom back in one piece, and his trust in her and Bestia to keep Mia and Jesse safe while they were gone. She shared back a brief burst of pride and acknowledgement, then blinked her optics and backed away to initiate her transformation. "Travel safely," she said as she collapsed back into car form.

Bestia nodded at him as well, then initiated her own shape change, twisting in a graceful whirl of folding and unfolding metal. She and the other NBTs were able to communicate over their internal radios even more efficiently as Brian could by touch, so sharing with Nesso had almost been the same as sharing with all three of them. Brian still preferred personal contact, though, and patted Bestia's hood as she rolled up to nose her bumper against Dom's legs.

Bestia wasn't paying him any further attention, though; her energy was all focused on her own driver. Dom couldn't feel it like Brian could, but he knew the value of personal connection, too; he stroked one callused palm over the black hood, nodding in the direction of the windshield. "Just make sure Mia's safe while we're gone. I called Vince and Rosa to let them know we're going, but 'til they get back here she'll be alone with Jesse. Get 'em out of here if anyone shows up who shouldn't."

"Understood," Bestia rumbled, then rolled back again to give Velocità space to pop her doors open.

"So what are we waiting for?" the Porsche asked, revving her engine impatiently.

Brian exchanged a long look with Dom, then slid behind the wheel, stowing his bag behind his seat. Whatever they might find in Berlin, he'd never regretted any of the choices he'd made on Dom's behalf, and he wasn't about to start now. "Let's do this."

* * *

><p>They didn't say much else on the long trip. Neither of them were much for talking about their feelings just for the hell of it, and there wasn't much else to do but ogle car ads in the complimentary travel magazines until they had more information. Brian kept going over the events of the last few weeks in L.A. again and again in his mind, trying to figure out how the hell he could have missed the signs, and he had a feeling Dom was doing the same thing. Was Letty really alive? Or was someone setting them up? And if it really was Letty, why the <em>fuck<em> hadn't she contacted anyone?

Dom had been handling the silver chain and cross the entire flight, passing it through his fingers like a string of rosary beads. Brian's eyes kept straying to it, drawn by year old echoes of watching Letty do the same thing. She'd hung it from the rearview of the Charger before she'd been called for the race through the desert, but before that last night he'd repeatedly seen her take it out of the pocket of her cargoes. It had been a talisman of memory for her, just like it was for Dom.

He'd never told Dom about that. It had felt like a private thing, a secret shared between them- and now he was seeing it again, from the other side. He _did_ hope Letty was alive; she was such a vital person, always wringing the most she could out of life. He'd come to appreciate her friendship independent of her relationship with the Torettos during those first weeks after Sector Seven, when he might as well have been on the moon for all the connection he'd felt to the world. At least, after the obligatory punch and yelling match were out of the way. But though he wasn't in any way her replacement, he had taken over a good chunk of the role that used to belong to her in Dom's life, and that fact made him feel just a little nauseous. Old abandonment issues flaring up again, he knew; but it wasn't so easy to shut them down again.

There wasn't any use in borrowing trouble before it arrived, though. Brian was glad when they finally left the airport and reclaimed their four-wheeled companion. Han and Gisele were staying at a five star hotel in the city, and Han had hinted he had more news for them in the brief phone call Dom had made when they landed. That was good; it would give them something to do, shake out the mental rust that had settled over all those hours of enforced idleness.

Velocità definitely agreed. "I didn't mind being cargo," she groused through her speakers as they rolled into the hotel's parking levels, "but all that air under us! Do you know how much force I'd hit with if I fell from that height? I don't know any shapes with wings; you'd better find me one before we go back, or I'll have to recharge the whole way to keep from fritzing my sensors again trying to find bottom and my systems always feel sluggish after that many hours in a row. Do you think we might go find a race tonight? I have a lot of energy to burn off."

Dom smiled a little at that, glancing over at Brian. "No tuning issues, huh?" he murmured. "I think her attention span has actually gotten shorter."

"I can _hear_ you, you know," Velocità replied to that, tartly.

"Yeah, he knows," Brian grinned, soothing her with a hand on the dash as she coasted into a space. "You're just eager to get moving. We all are. Don't worry, we won't leave you down here too long."

"See that you don't," she sighed as she clicked the doors open to let them out. "I'm going to call Bestia; I bet she's bouncing on her struts with impatience by now."

"Tell her no Hobbs yet; I know she worries," Dom commented, absently patting the door as he got out of the little Porsche, duffel slung over his shoulder.

"I'm going to give that Gurkha of his a talking-to if I ever get the chance!" Velocità chirped back, then slammed her doors shut again and dimmed her lights, drawing all her attention inward.

Brian shook his head, following Dom to the elevator. It still amazed Brian how well Dom had taken to the existence of sentient cars; but then again, both Torettos had practically been born with oil for blood and wrenches in place of silver spoons in their mouths. Dom was fond of saying cars made more sense than people anyway, so why not literally? And truth be told, Brian had thought the same thing at times even before his encounter with the Allspark energy. As much time and care as they put into their vehicles, it was only fitting the universe return the favor and allow them to love them back.

Han had left a keycard waiting for them at the front desk; he must have asked for a courtesy call, too, because he was waiting at the door by the time they exited the elevator, ever-present bag of something crunchable clutched in one hand. "Dom. Brian," he said, waving them in. "Good to see you. Wish it was under better circumstances."

"What do you mean, better?" Dom replied, stopping several steps into the suite with a furrowed brow. "What's going on?"

Han frowned back, pausing in the kitchen area to pull a few bottles of chilled beer out of the little refrigerator. "Hard to say," he said. "Gisele's out learning more, but we're having trouble tracking her back before she came to the city."

Dom took one of the bottles, but made no move to drink; his scowl deepened as he met Han's gaze. "But you have tracked her since. Just tell me one thing- are you sure it's her?"

Han hesitated, but finally nodded under the pressure of the impatience radiating off Dom like a heat mirage. "Pretty sure," he said.

Dom closed his eyes briefly, then nodded and tilted the bottle back.

"So what's happened since you called last night?" Brian asked for both of them.

Han gestured toward the dining area table, then slid into one of the chairs and lifted the lid on a snoozing laptop. "A warrant went out in her name today- here." He pulled up a few scanned pages from a file that had undoubtedly already crossed a desk somewhere at the DSS.

Brian swallowed at the black and white image of Letty visible on the screen, side by side with the whorls from a fingerprint card. She really _was_ alive, then. "What'd she do?"

"What did _they_ do, is the question," Han corrected him, mousing up a few more pages. "There was at least one undercover heavy of some kind with her when I saw her, and three fast cars were involved in a hit on a military convoy a couple of nights ago. That's where they picked up her prints. She's working with someone... a very powerful someone, it looks like."

Brian frowned, trying to connect that up with the little they already knew. "It's got to be a government group. Can't be FBI; I don't see how they could have kept it from me, and they can't operate outside the country legally. But if another agency scooped us? And if she was injured enough she couldn't have found a phone before we went off the radar? It might even make sense for her to have stayed with them. I just can't figure why a group with that much pull would want her in the first place. Sure, she's a good driver, but Braga was right about one thing: good drivers are a dime a dozen. The suits only recruited _me_ because of who my dad and granddad were. What's her angle?"

Han nodded thoughtfully. "No offense, Dom, but there's no way this is about you; you're not that important in the bigger picture. Though- I wouldn't bet against this having nothing to do with _you_." He turned in his chair, aiming a speculative glance at Brian.

"What do you mean by that?" Brian frowned at him. "You don't think- NEST? Why?"

"NEST? The robot guys?" Dom glanced between them, frown deepening. "I know they want Brian because of Mission City, but Letty was nowhere near there when it all went down."

"You sure about that? You'd already left the rest of us behind by then," Han asked.

Dom nodded firmly. "She was in L.A. with Mia, and Mia would have said if something happened to her."

Brian picked at the label of his beer bottle thoughtfully. "NEST. Huh. Well it should be pretty easy to tell if it _is_ them; Velocità says the NBEs have pretty distinctive electromagnetic signatures, and if there's any in the city right now she'll know."

"I think she'll find at least one," Han said, grimly. "Whatever that convoy was carrying- it didn't go down easily. I found a shaky Youtube clip that looked a lot like what came out of Rome a few months ago, or Mission City before that. I think NEST _is_ here- and we don't have the time or crew for a complex plan. Even if we catch them off guard, we might not be able to stop them if they turn hostile."

Brian shrugged, all his attention on Dom, not Han, as he answered. "It's Letty," he said.

Dom shook his head immediately. "No. We're not risking you. Or Velocità."

Brian blew out a breath. "How about this: we wait to see what Gisele finds out first. If she doesn't have any leads for us, _then_ we hunt down our hypothetical NEST agents."

"I don't like this idea, Brian," Dom insisted. "It sounds a lot like you falling on your sword to me. There's got to be other options."

"Says the man who told me to leave him behind on a bridge in Rio," Brian snorted. "C'mon, you know I'm right. And if it all goes wrong, at least we'll have Letty there to put in a word in my favor."

"Provided it _is_ her. And provided she has any status with them," Han pointed out.

"I'll take that risk," Brian insisted. "It's my choice; and she's _my_ car. I'm sure Vel will take me even if you try to talk her out of it, so you might as well give in now."

"Buster," Dom grumbled darkly.

"You know it," Brian tilted his chin up, staring him down.

"Whatever," Dom finally sighed, pulling out the chair across from Han and taking a seat. Brian sank into the chair next to him, feeling a little better now that they'd made a decision- and even more so, when he felt Dom's hand curl apologetically over his thigh beneath the table. More than twenty-four hours had passed since their lazy wakeup the day of Han's call, and he was starting to feel a little skin-hungry.

"Good," Han said, rolling his eyes at them both. "The two of you were giving me a neckache." Then he turned the laptop around, pointing out a detail in one of the files. "Tell me what you make of this."

* * *

><p>Gisele greeted Han at the door with a kiss that made Brian glance away, then offered he and Dom each a hug. She lingered a little longer with Dom, giving him a concerned look. "This is the woman you spoke of when you met me," she said. "The one who could see through you, who was nothing like me."<p>

Dom nodded, though he locked eyes with Brian over her shoulder as he did so. "She ain't the only one that fits the description I gave you," he said- about as much as he ever said about their relationship in public to someone who wasn't Mia or Vince. "But yeah. She's the reason I tracked Fenix to Braga in the first place. Not sure what it means that she's here, but if it's her, I gotta at least talk to her."

"I'm afraid I couldn't find out where she's staying; she may in fact have already left," Gisele replied sympathetically. "There was a street race four nights ago; she was seen there, with two men with the bearing of soldiers beside her. She arrived on a racing motorcycle, make and model unknown, spent some time examining the cars, then left before the first race began. No one from the club remembers seeing her again, either."

"Looking for something," Dom concluded.

"What were the guys driving?" Brian wanted to know. "Was it a GMC Topkick?"

"How did you know?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "Have you met them before?"

Brian sighed. "Yeah, lucky guess; they were the point guys for the military team in Mission City. The Topkick's an NBE, which means the bike probably is, too. I bet they're here looking for more. Only a few survived the battle in Mission City, but it's been more than a year since then and unusual meteor showers have made the news several times. There's no telling how many of them there are now- and odds are not all of them are friendlies."

Gisele nodded. "It seems likely. We will need to find another way to track her."

Brian shared another long glance with Dom. "And it just so happens we might have that way," he said.

"Brian..." Dom began, warningly.

Brian held up a hand as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "Hey, App. Can you ping Vel for me?" he asked, and waited as the little touchscreen device immediately began dialing on its own.

"Nice," Han commented. "Is that like the iFriend you woke for Rome?"

Brian smirked. "A little less cuddly, a little more inclined to surf the 'net on his own time. If I still had to pay a cell phone bill, I'd be spending half my income on roaming charges and 3G service."

"Brian!" Velocità's voice issued from the tiny speaker before either Han or App could reply. "Bestia says to tell you Vince and Rosa and Nico have returned; everything's fine at home."

"That's good to hear," he said. "I've got a question for you- I wondered if you can tell if there are any others like you in the city? Homegrown or otherwise?"

"I checked that first thing," she said, brightly. "There's one active signature within fifteen miles. Don't worry, I encrypted my call to Bestia and buried it in the cell phone network; he can't have heard me."

That was one of the first things Brian had made sure of, in the early days when they'd first been discovering they _did_ have the ability to connect with each other. Hiding in plain sight was a lot more difficult if you made a lot of 'noise'. The fact that his vehicular friends were constructed with all-Earth materials and used Earth-adaptive technologies helped them there; the extraterrestrial type was easy to pick out by contrast in close enough proximity to the source of transmission. True Cybertronian energies were just too different to fully blend in. But if there was only one, where had the other gone?

"That's not why I asked," he said. "I was wondering if you could take us to him?"

Velocità was quiet for a moment; a few seconds by human time, much longer when judged by computer-based speeds. "Why?" she finally asked, puzzlement in the electronic tones of her voice, having presumably crunched through all the possibilities she could think of. "I thought you didn't want NEST to find us; and if they're not with NEST they'll probably want to kill us."

"We think Letty might be working with them," Dom spoke up. "She was seen with a big motorbike that Brian thinks is an NBE. If it's just the one, and we catch 'em by surprise, the risk should be pretty low." He was scowling at Brian as he said it, but he kept his voice calm for Velocità's sake.

She thought about that a second longer, then agreed. "Okay. Bestia and Nesso will be so jealous I got to meet one. But if you want to do that, we'd better leave right away. The signal is headed out of the city; he's at sixteen miles now and counting."

Dom rubbed a hand over his head, then lifted an eyebrow at Han and Gisele. "Follow us, but keep back; if it all goes to hell I don't want them ID'ing you, too."

"If it all goes to hell, we'll batter the gates down after you," Han replied with a smirk.

* * *

><p>It was closer to thirty miles from the hotel when they finally caught up to the signal.<p>

The bike was definitely a racing model, green with a logo that Dom didn't recognize; Brian _had_ seen it before, but he couldn't have sworn whether it was Autobot or Decepticon. He hadn't been around either faction long enough to memorize the shapes of the symbols. A better clue was the fact that the bike didn't even have a kickstand: no Terrestrial vehicle would be without one.

The rider was definitely a woman, clad all in black leathers, but the helmet she wore hid her hair and features- and as they sped up to close with her, she sped up too, preventing easy identification.

"Well, she's seen us," Brian said as the bike began weaving aggressively through traffic in an attempt to lose them. "Any other signals yet?"

"No, just the one!" the car replied brightly. "Can I catch her? Or do I still have to practice laying low?"

Dom grinned slowly at him. "Had a talk with her, did you?"

"Well, we _were_ trying not to draw attention," Brian rolled his eyes. "And someone had to; it's not like _you_ were giving any of them the 'license and registration' talk." He tapped the dash. "Go ahead, Vel; I know you can do it."

"_Shit_," Dom gasped as she immediately juked out into oncoming traffic. "Yeah, she really is your kid, isn't she?"

"You know it," Brian chuckled.

The chase lasted for several more miles before the driver abruptly slowed and ducked for an exit off the autobahn. Velocità hurried to follow, tracking the bike as it slowed toward a fairly deserted industrial type parking area. Brian hadn't seen a gunbelt or a shotgun sheath or anything of the kind on the bike, so he played it cool as they slowed down to park behind her, hoping the bike itself wasn't about to transform and take a shot at them.

Then the driver swung her leg over the bike and turned toward them, and Dom inhaled sharply beside him.

It _was_ her. No question. Every line of her stance was familiar: the self-assurance and aggression she carried with her like a cloak. She was thinner in a way that spoke of a long recovery, bones prominent in her face and at her wrists, but the woman in black was definitely Leticia Ortiz.

Dom's hand went briefly to the pocket where he carried the silver necklace. Then he shot a brief, tense look at Brian and opened the door to step out of the car.

Brian followed suit, hanging back a little as he watched her react to Dom's presence. She stiffened as she caught sight of her ex, and a slow, appreciative smile curved her mouth as she removed her helmet- but she didn't rush forward to greet him, choosing instead to continue her slow stalk.

"Dominic Toretto," she said warmly as he closed the distance between them. "I might have known. If anyone was going to track me down it would be you. What was it, the race a few nights ago?"

"And the club you visited. Han's in town," Dom replied, arms still down at his sides as he approached within arm's reach.

"Of course," Letty snorted, looking up at him, reaching out to lay her palms on his broad chest. "I suppose it's more of a surprise that I don't smell any skanks around," she said. Then she swallowed, her smile faltering a little, and Dom gathered her up into a crushing hug.

"Letty," was all he said; but the rough timbre of his voice more than covered everything he didn't.

"Dom," she sighed, leaning into him for a long moment.

They looked as gorgeous together as they ever had; matched in a different way than Dom and Brian were, with all the freight of long years of familiarity in their body language. But after a minute, Letty pulled back, looking up at him again- and Brian could see the distance wrought by the years since the truck heists, more clearly than he had that second time in L.A. Maybe it was that he was seeing them together now instead of separately as he had then, or maybe it was the added maturity in both of them wrought by the tragedies they'd each faced, but there was a degree of reserve there that spoke of choices made and bridges burned. He let out a quiet sigh as a few more of his worries dropped away, then stepped forward to give his own greeting.

Letty's gaze darted to him over Dom's shoulder as he moved, and she chuckled suddenly, expression wry. "Or maybe it's not such a surprise after all. You been taking good care of my man, Brian?"

"You know it," he said, smiling lopsidedly back. He wasn't surprised she'd guessed; she'd never even _asked_ if he'd be willing to help her help Dom, just barged right in and assumed, and of course she knew Dom's cues. "I'd apologize, but..."

She hit him lightly on the chest with a gloved fist, smirking up at him. "I wouldn't believe it. When they told me the score after I woke up, I figured it was only a matter of time. He left me behind out of some macho idea of chivalry, but _you_ he took with him. I figured it was a sign."

Dom look startled at that. "Letty, I..."

"Don't you apologize either, papa." She shook a finger at him, her tone a little heated. "It's not that I don't still love you; but love was never our problem. I don't want to be _protected_, I want to be an equal, and I finally realized some part of you's always going to see me as that sixteen year old in Echo Park. I thought I was going to show you different when I hunted up Brian and made the deal for Braga. Maybe if things had worked out..." She shrugged. "But they didn't, and that race is over and done."

Dom sighed, hands clenching briefly at his sides, then nodded. "I never forgot you, either."

She smirked, chin tilted up, taking that as her due. "Besides, _I_ have a job, now; one that means more to me than robbing fuel trucks or making green. Even if I could go back, I wouldn't give it up."

Brian glanced over her shoulder at her ride at that. "Can you tell us what happened?" he asked.

She followed his gaze, furrowing her brow at the bike. Then she nodded. "When I was running from Fenix, I almost hit this crazy biker that came out of nowhere. He was with a covert military group, and we caught his attention, so he followed us and stuck around after I crashed and burned. I was pretty fucked up, though, even after he got me to a medic, and while I was out his boss had an argument with your boss over who'd get to protect me while I was out. They were worried at first there might be a leak, that maybe that's why Braga killed all the drivers that night; it took 'em awhile to realize it was just a regular thing. And of course by the time I came out of it, Dom was in jail."

That was obviously a cover story, though probably true as far as it went, but before Brian could ask any more questions a sudden shrill sound split the air from behind him. "Brian, incoming!" Velocità said. "There's a second one, only a mile or so out! I didn't know they could hide like that!"

All of them flinched... and behind Letty the motorcycle reared up in response, transforming in a swift whirlwind of green and silver parts. "Decepticon!" the resulting robot blurted in an angry male voice, aiming a cannon toward the blue Porsche.

Velocità transformed a few seconds later, her slender form taller and more armored than the other's. Without access to Cybertronium or concentrated Energon, though, her weaponry wasn't quite as deadly, and she knew it. She took two long steps forward, her legs forming an arch over Brian and Dom to give herself the option of throwing her frame bodily between them and danger, and shaped a long, electrified steel sword from one arm.

"You won't take him!" she said, narrowing green optics at the NBE.

Brian braced a hand on Velocità's nearest leg, trying to project calmness to her as he looked up at the menacing figure. "Whoa, whoa!" he said. "She's not a Decepticon. She's neutral, and she's _mine_, so back off. We're not a threat to you."

The sound of jet engines, backed up by a set of lights starting a low approach, further complicated the situation. No wonder the first NBE signature had started to leave town, and no wonder Letty had pulled over when she did; there was an airstrip close by, and she and her friends were expecting a pick up. There was nothing for it, though, but to brazen things out and hope no one shot them.

The Autobot ignored him, warming up its cannon. "Back away from the humans, now!"

"Knockout!" Letty yelled at him, trying to catch his attention. "Stop it! These are my friends!"

"Then why are they with a Decepticon?" it asked crossly, turning its optics toward her.

"The man told you, she's not one of your Decepticons," Dom insisted, stepping closer to brace his shoulder against Brian's. "She's Earth-born. Leave her out of this! She's only here because we are."

"Earth-born?" The robot reared back a little, its cannon slowly starting to spin down. "That's not possible. The Earth-born from Mission City were all accounted for!"

"That's probably because she's not _from_ Mission City," a sudden extra voice added from the darkness. "Is she, Agent O'Conner."

Everyone's heads turned to watch an enormous black pickup roll up, a thirty-something white military guy in the driver's seat and Rome's double riding shotgun. Brian recognized them as Captain Lennox- or Major now, judging by the insignia- and Sergeant Robert Epps, former Army and Air Force special ops and undoubtedly members of NEST.

"I'm not an agent anymore," Brian replied. "I'm just a guy with a kid and a couple of very special cars who came to Germany to check up on an old friend."

"Huh," Lennox grunted, stepping down from the truck cab as he tipped his chin at Dom. "And him?"

"None of your goddamn business," Dom grunted.

The Sergeant stepped down from the other side of the truck, which immediately began to clank and expand into a 'bot at least twice the size and bulk of the ones still facing off against each other. "Is that so," he said, circling the mechanical warriors. "You know, we got a file on you from the DSS last year that says it _is_ our business."

Now that they were out of the truck/warrior, Brian could see that both men wore dark leather gloves to shield their hands, as per the Allspark radiation guidelines Tej had hunted down for Brian on the 'Net. He flexed his fingers at the sight. He was kind of glad he hadn't known about the regs the government had created until he'd already gone through the trial and error stage; without that, he'd never have learned what he could do. Bestia and Nesso and Velocità wouldn't exist, never mind the various other small companions he'd created for his friends, and his life would be duller for their absence.

"Might have known Hobbs would spread the word," Dom snorted. "We're still no threat to you."

"We've been a little busy, or we'd have looked you up sooner," the Major replied, frowning as he eyed them both. "You're right about that much, you weren't exactly high on the threat list. I remember whose side you fought on, O'Conner, and it wasn't Megatron's. But I'm guessing you _were_ probably responsible for the little spikes of Gamma we kept detecting in L.A. and Brazil?"

Brian's stomach sank at that. His mechanical children might be entirely home-built apart from their Sparks, but he himself wasn't fully human anymore, and he should have remembered that. If Lennox was right, he'd been exposing them to detection all along. But if NEST _had_ 'overheard' him that early on... wait, was it just since he started working on Bestia, or had they tracked his earlier mishaps with the energy as well?

"When you say L.A., do you mean-" He glanced at Letty.

"_This_ being was the one creating the pulses I was sent to track?" Knockout demanded, inadvertently answering his question.

"He 'sounds' more like Sam than either of you, Will," the enormous former truck chimed in.

"I guess that's not a surprise," Lennox said, still frowning, "since he doesn't wear gloves, either- though in Sam's case that's mostly because he can affect things whether he's wearing them or not. I'm sure the boss will have some questions about that, regardless."

"Some other time, maybe," Brian shrugged, casually. "We've done what we came here to do, so we'll have to take a rain check on that concrete cell. I'll be sure and tell your cousin you said hi, though, Sergeant." He tipped his chin at Epps.

Lennox blinked at that, cutting off whatever else he'd been about to say in favor of glancing at the NCO. "Cousin?" he asked incredulously.

The Sergeant narrowed his eyes at Brian, affronted- then suddenly widened them. "Fuck, you're _that_ Brian? No wonder Rome was so damn cagey last time I talked to him. He knows about this, don't he?" He snorted and turned to his superior. "You remember my evil twin of a cousin, right? This is that crazy white kid he met in juvie and boosted cars with for years before he left to try on the cop side of things. Damn, if I'd known that I'd have ripped a strip off you in Mission City, brah; I'd just heard all about that adventure you dragged him into in Miami."

"Cop to Sector Seven to fugitive?" Lennox shook his head disapprovingly. "Not a very encouraging record. Why _should_ we let you go, O'Conner? All the other NBTs we've run into have been hostile as fuck, and we can't trust you to respect U.S. or Autobot interests."

"You can trust me to respect _my_ interests, and the interests of my friends," Brian frowned back. Velocità was still on full alert, and Dom was a mass of tension beside him, but he thought he was starting to see a way clear. These were basically reasonable people; and he'd done this kind of negotiation before.

"Don't just take Rome's word for it, either; ask Letty," he continued, nodding at her. "I'll agree to a meeting a month from now in a non-extradition location, with the understanding that there'll be papers on the table to clear our records. I won't consent to _anything_ that endangers my friends or family, including the four-wheeled kind, but I'm sure we can come to some kind of arrangement. I hear Diego Garcia's got some nice beaches."

"Brian," Dom objected, warningly.

Brian turned to him and shook his head. "You keep saying we're going to end up in a ditch or behind bars someday. If I can find a third option..."

"It ain't so different from ride or die, Dom," Letty chipped in. "They haven't fucked me over yet, and a quarter mile would be fucking _boring_ after some of the things I've seen with Knockout."

The gigantic black warrior hummed. "Optimus says he'll agree to that if you do, Will. If he can help Sam or be useful against the Decepticons, General Morshower will clear it." Then he lowered a cannon, spinning it up in Brian's direction. "But if he does not appear..."

"If _we_ don't show up, you'll hunt us down, we get the picture," Dom grumbled, then nudged Velocità's leg. "Shoot us, or agree, but whichever, we're getting the fuck out of here before the rest of your guys arrive. We're not going with you today."

Major Lennox narrowed his eyes, exchanged a long nonverbal conversation with Sergeant Epps, and finally nodded. "Say we do this. How do we get in contact?"

Brian fished App out of a pocket. Maybe Lennox would see it as offering a hostage for good behavior; but maybe he'd actually talk to App, and half Brian's next argument would already be won for him. Smart phones made surprisingly good negotiators.

He admonished the little device to behave, then tossed him over. "App knows how to reach us. I'll expect to see him in one piece at that meeting, though."

Lennox's eyebrows rose as he carefully handled the phone, then slipped it into a vest pocket as gingerly as if it were a live grenade. "Got it." He cocked an eyebrow at Letty. "Ortiz?"

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "Don't get your panties in a wad." Then she banged on Knockout's knee to get him to back off, and came over to give Dom and Brian a joint hug. "You decide to run, I've got your back," she whispered, "but I hope you don't. These guys can be sticks in the mud sometimes, but they're good people."

"They better have _your_ back," was all Dom said; then he pulled back and pressed a last kiss to her forehead. "I've missed you, girl."

"Call Mia," was all Brian had to add. "She misses you, too. And- shit, this isn't the time, but get her to tell you about the other new additions to the family, all right?"

"Been up to a lot in the last year, huh?" she said.

"You have no idea," Dom snorted. "Don't be a stranger." Then he pulled something from his pocket, pressing it into her hand. "You gave this to me twice. But it belongs to you, not me. Make sure the next person you give it to deserves it."

She opened her hand, a bittersweet smile curving her mouth. Then she reached up and fastened the cross around her own neck. "Go on, get out of here. I'll be fine."

Velocità collapsed back into car shape behind them, and somewhere off in the direction the plane had landed a truck horn sounded. "Three more of them coming, Brian," she announced.

"Time to go," he said, slipping back behind the wheel. "Dom?"

Dom nodded to Letty one more time. "Be seeing you," he said. Then he stepped into the passenger side, closing the door as Velocità spun her tires, reversing direction to speed away. He watched out the rear window for a moment as the NEST team receded in the distance, then took a deep breath and turned forward again, letting it out slowly.

"Had to make a call, huh?" he said after a moment, raising an eyebrow at Brian. "You've been making a habit of some pretty questionable decisions, lately."

"What, you're not pleased with the way they've turned out?" Brian said, and grinned at the nonplused look on Dom's face. "Think of it this way. If we play our cards right, the whole family might end up back together, free and clear. A long, strange road to get back to where we started, but..." He shrugged.

Dom snorted, tipping his chin up. Then he glanced at the wheel, turning on its own as Velocità unexpectedly avoided the next entrance to the autobahn, taking a more meandering road. "Well. Not quite where we started."

"No," Brian said, smiling slowly. "We're in a car that can drive itself... and how far back did Han say they'd wait?"

"Far enough," Dom said, dark eyes glinting as he met Brian's gaze. "It's a long flight home."

It wasn't perfect.

Nor was the arrangement they eventually reached with NEST. Or their last encounter with Hobbs.

But a little reality was never too much to pay for getting to have your cake and eat it, too.

-x-


	4. One Extortionist to Another

**Title**: One Extortionist to Another

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _O'Conner raised an eyebrow, then stood, holding out a bare hand for Sam to shake. "Sam Witwicky? I'm Brian O'Conner. This is my family: Dom, Jesse, and Mia."_ 2800 words.

**Spoilers**: AU fusion post-Fast Five and Transformers (2007)

**Notes**: 24 Days of Ficmas 2011, Day 14: for ymfaery. Prompt: More of my "The Fast and the NBTs" crossover universe.

* * *

><p>Sam was busy working on his physics homework, kicking his feet under a heavy wooden desk as he squinted his way through a scroll of holographic Allspark symbols to translate what it was telling him into the limited frame of reference understood by most Earth scientists, when the guy who was supposed to be able to help him manage the Cube energy finally showed up.<p>

If he'd still been a normal teenage boy, your oversexed average kid more concerned with his next opportunity to score than whether or not his car might have motives independent from its driver, he'd probably have just been starting his freshman year at some state college or other. Lucky him, though, he got to worry about both... and he couldn't even sit at a metal table anymore without inadvertently bringing it to life. Not to mention, he had an alien database in his head that wouldn't let him half-ass his classes any more even if he _tried_. He'd finished up his GED within a few months of inadvertently turning several blocks' worth of Mission City residents into machine whisperers, and was already halfway through a mechanical engineering degree. Might as well work _with_ his new strengths rather than fight everyone around him trying to drag his head back out of the sand.

Right. Much as he loved Bumblebee and the guys, though, and as happy as he was to have Mikaela with them at Diego Garcia, he'd been 'making the best of things' long enough to be really looking forward to _anything_ that might give him a time out from being The Human Prime. Two years without being able to touch a cell phone, computer, or networked gaming system- yeah, he could have Bee surf the web for him or place his calls, but it just wasn't the same. He was past withdrawal pains now and into full on pining for the ability to so much as change the channel on a TV without help.

Fortunately, the day he'd been waiting for seemed to have arrived. The door of the office NEST had temporarily stowed him in opened, and Lennox stuck his head in. "Sam? They're here."

"Yes!" Sam dropped his pencil, slammed his textbook shut and cracked his knuckles. The Allspark overlay faded back into whatever corner of his brain it usually slept in when it didn't have any specific input to give him, and he grinned at the Major in relief. "Main conference room? I'm so there."

"Careful what you bump into; we didn't totally clear it, so O'Conner would have some way to demonstrate his usefulness before we actually make a deal with him."

Lennox flexed his visible hand in its black glove as he spoke. He and Epps and half the other agents and soldiers on base were technically able to control their own reservoirs of Allspark energy with the help of a thin nonconductive barrier, but it was still kind of like being Rogue, Mikaela had told him; they were mostly as excited about the idea of ditching their hand-condoms as Sam was about being allowed within breathing distance of electronics at all.

"Who else did he bring with him? That big scary guy he had with him in Berlin?" Sam had seen pictures, courtesy of Ironhide's memory banks; the bald guy with the really impressive musculature, not to mention criminal record, had nearly made two of his companion- never mind a still-growing kid like him.

"Toretto? Yeah, they're brothers-in-law or something, apparently," Lennox replied, arching his eyebrows as he held the door for Sam and began escorting him down the hall. "He has a kid with Toretto's sister; they brought them both along, as well."

Huh; but they _had_ insisted on the meeting taking place in a non-extradition country, hence the whole reason Sam had been doing his homework on his own rather than under Bee's supervision at the base. Apparently, that had given O'Conner enough of a feeling of security to risk bringing his family along.

"Show of faith, you think?" he asked Lennox, curiously. "Or maybe proof of sincerity?" He'd learned a _little_ about strategy and politics over the last couple of years out of necessity, even if it was incredibly unlikely he'd ever be allowed a job as public as a diplomatic position.

Lennox nodded. "So we figure. According to Ortiz, they're just the ringleaders of a larger group of extremely gifted criminals; the rest are probably standing off somewhere close to attempt a rescue if we shaft them. Not that they'd get very far- but it would be more problematic than we'd like, since they have to have at least one more NBT out there. They only brought one to the meet outright, and O'Conner said 'cars', plural, when we met up with them before."

"I guess I'd be suspicious, too, given their history," Sam shrugged. "You think they're actually here to deal, or have they got something else in mind?"

"Don't see why they'd have come if they _weren't_ serious about dealing. It's not like they need the money- or that we have anything they don't that they'd be able to get access to, here. Except for the obvious: they could have dealt with the Decepticons before they came to us."

Which meant there was a nontrivial risk that they might be spies- but somehow, Sam didn't think a couple with a little kid who'd taken down at least three drug lords that NEST knew of would be all that keen to work for homicidal would-be robotic overlords. "True, true. Okay, then; here we go."

Lennox had stopped in front of the door to a large conference room; now he swung it wide with a flourish. Damn, but Sam was looking forward to being able to touch doorknobs again himself; then he could choose his own timing for entrances. He rocked up on his toes, took a deep breath for courage, and then went inside.

A heavy-duty, polished wooden table took up the center of the room; ten chairs had been spaced up and down its long sides, and a wide bank of windows filled the scene with streaming sunshine. Epps sat in the far chair on the right; two chairs had been left blank next to him, presumably for Lennox and Sam, and in the near chairs on that side a pair of hardlight holograms represented the Autobots' interest, in this case Ratchet and Optimus.

Sam skimmed over his allies' presence with a distracted eye and focused on the people seated across from them instead. Nearest him, across from Optimus, sat a blond guy with jeans, a screen-print tee, and really intense blue eyes: O'Conner. His huge, darker-skinned bruiser of a friend sat next to him, and on the far side of _him_, a dark-haired, smiling woman who could only be the baby mama: Mia Toretto. It was a little weird, though, that she wasn't sitting next to O'Conner- and that she wasn't the one holding the baby, either. Incongruously, the tiny little dude in the creeper was draped over Dom Toretto's shoulder instead; the big man was gently patting the baby's back as he eyed Sam in return.

"So this is the kid," Toretto said, his voice a rumble low and rough enough to out-masculine Ironhide. His eyes were warm with amusement- though he directed his smirk toward O'Conner, not Sam.

O'Conner raised one eyebrow in return, then stood, holding out a bare hand for Sam to shake. "Sam Witwicky? I'm Brian O'Conner. These are my family: Dom, Jesse, and Mia."

Interesting, the way he'd ordered that list. Sam's mom would have _killed_ his dad if he'd introduced _their_ family to people in that order: Mikaela or whoever, then Sam, and _then_ Mom. Something was up with that. But probably still not anything Megatron related.

"Nice to finally meet you, man," he replied, smiling as he automatically responded to the gesture.

He froze halfway through the greeting, though, pulling his hand back a little as his brain finally registered the physical implications rather than the social ones. He hadn't actually touched anyone else's naked skin, except for the Autobots or occasionally Mikaela, in the two years since Mission City; the energy always humming along under his skin gave normal people an unpleasant shocking tingle, and even most others affected by the Allspark were set a little on edge by it.

O'Conner frowned a little at the pause- then bowed his head slightly as Mia stood and leaned over to murmur something behind the shield of her hand. He nodded at whatever she'd told him, and his expression softened a little. "Hey, man, it's okay. I'm here to help, remember?"

Sam swallowed, then nerved himself up and reached out to grasp the guy's hand like a normal person. And- nothing happened, at least nothing like what _usually_ happened when he touched someone new. The excitable remnants of the Allspark that had set up shop in Sam's head flickered outward, as they usually did- only to bounce off O'Conner's somehow shielded presence, leaving him with an impression of calm, ordered strength. O'Conner's eyes briefly flared an even more electric shade of blue, but that was the extent of his reaction.

"Wow," Sam breathed, forgetting to let go in his enjoyment of the moment. "This is- this is great! You really do know how to control it."

"Yeah," O'Conner grinned back. "It might be a little tougher for you- shit, you could probably have repaired Bestia in an hour, when it took me _weeks_ to wake her- but practice makes perfect. You put in the time, your little problem will take care of itself soon enough."

_Little_ problem? Sam snorted. "Time is _all_ I got these days, don't worry."

"You're _sure_ you can help him?" Epps asked, intently.

"Very sure," O'Conner replied, tugging at his hand until Sam got the idea and let go, flushing a little in embarrassment. Then they both took their seats at the table, Lennox following along behind them.

"Teaching him how to safely discharge the energy will be the easiest part," O'Conner continued, "or at least it was, for me. What you probably really want him to be able to do, though, is be able to control it enough to affect only certain things, at certain times, and not others. That might take a little more trial and error- I sure hope you have some junked machinery for us to work with- but if _I_ could do it? He definitely can."

O'Conner's brash confidence was reassuring to Sam- and drew thoughtful looks from the others. "Maybe a demonstration, then...?" Epps replied, then pulled a smartphone- a smartass little 'bot called App that O'Conner had lent the NEST team when they ran into each other in Berlin- and slid it across the table. "We give a little, you give a little."

O'Conner's grin widened as he saw the phone, and he stretched out a hand; the phone immediately spun and unfolded into a shiny little spidery shape as familiar fingers approached it. App skittered right across the offered hand, up O'Conner's sleeve, and onto the guy's shoulder, chittering loudly the whole time.

"Calm down, calm down. I'm here, aren't I? And I know damn well you've been talking to Velocità every day, so you can just quit with the unappreciated act. I won't loan you out again anytime soon, I promise."

App gave a little electronic huff at that, then arched against O'Conner's neck, tiny green optics shuttering as it rubbed its metallic spine against his skin. Then it hunkered down, hooking tiny claws into his collar as it settled in to observe the proceedings.

"...Where were we?" O'Conner said next, blinking over toward Toretto.

Toretto had stopped patting the baby's back at some point during Sam's introductory handshake and shifted him to a reclining position in the sling of one beefy arm, draping a soft scrap of blanket over his upper face to coax him to sleep. Sam had seen Lennox do the very same thing with his little daughter, Annabelle, just the year before, and it softened his impression of the guy considerably. Which was probably the whole point of him being the one to carry the baby in to begin with; the whole rest of Team NEST were watching the guy with half-disbelieving, half sappy expressions on their faces, too.

"Demonstration," Toretto rumbled, one corner of his mouth curling up in a smile.

"Yeah. About that." O'Conner turned to face Epps again, then glanced at Lennox, and finally shifted his attention to Optimus' trucker-drag avatar, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. "Sorry, guys; milk, cow, and all that."

Down the far end of the table, Mia was suppressing a smile; across from her, Epps made a disbelieving noise, and Lennox raised his eyebrows. The Autobots were still watching him calmly, though, not thrown off by the slang.

"Paperwork first, I think. Amnesty for us- and any other friends I name," O'Conner continued, firmly.

"You'll promise to come with us and assist to the best of your ability if we agree?" Optimus replied, preempting any further response from the human NEST representatives.

"Said I would, didn't I? The only time I ever broke a vow before was to put family first." He exchanged a shrewd grin with Toretto beside him, reaching out to rest a hand on the other guy's thigh... and okay, maybe Sam needed to do a little mental rearrangement about the makeup of that family. How did that even work with the baby, anyway? Nevermind; it _still_ wasn't his business.

Then O'Conner smiled, matching gazes with the senior Prime again, blue eyes to blue optics. "If nothing else, I'm gonna need a safe place for my kid to go to school. Teaching adults- or near-adults- control over this shit is one thing; I'm _really_ not looking forward to Jesse's terrible twos."

"The effect is genetically transmissible, then?" Ratchet spoke up then, mechanical voice lifting with intrigue. "I had theorized that it might be possible given the degree of modification to each host's cellular structures, but none of the affected personnel at Diego Garcia have procreated since the dispersal of the Allspark."

Sam blinked; Mikaela was going to smack Ratchet with his own socket wrench when she heard about _that_; no one had bothered to tell her or Sam about the possibility of passing the Allspark-granted abilities on to any kids they might have, just gave them the standard speeches on 'being careful'. At least- to his knowledge. Damn; that made his figuring out how to reign things in even more imperative.

Not that they planned on having kids any time soon! They were just eighteen, and between his education and Mikaela's apprenticeship in the mech med bay it would be a _long_ time before they had the energy to devote to any sparklets of their own. But it would be kind of nice to be sure they knew what to expect, when they did.

Mia had smiled at Ratchet's enthusiastic tone. It made her even prettier; he couldn't believe O'Conner would pick her brother over _her_. But then again, to each their own, he supposed. Mikaela was that gorgeous, and she'd chosen him and Bee, right? Maybe they wouldn't have made it on their own, but with an Autobot guardian in their lives whose EM fields interacted so _pleasantly_ with their own Allspark-magnified ones... well. And these guys lived with their own giant robot friends; that kind of threw all questions of standard human behavior out the window, to Sam's mind.

"You'd be surprised how many infant toys have batteries or metallic moving parts," Mia said. "We were lucky the cars were already awake, or there might have been a disaster the first time Jesse threw a tantrum when we were out for a drive. Though it _is_ pretty helpful to have a mobile that activates on its own whenever he cries in the night."

"Damn, never thought about that," Lennox muttered. "Wonder if Annabelle would like one."

"Better warn Sarah before you try it, though; she'll kill you if she walks in to check on your little girl and the crib talks back to her," Epps snickered, elbowing his commander.

"Fascinating," Optimus commented, eyeing the napping infant.

"So," Sam spoke up loudly, eager to drag the meeting back on track. "We going to do this thing, or what?" He crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair, and glanced between the visitors. "We can help you; you can help us. Sounds like a win-win scenario to me."

O'Conner glanced at Toretto again, and Toretto inclined his head in agreement.

"All right," the guy said, knitting his fingers on the table. "Let me see what you have drawn up. And something else. There's this DSS agent named Hobbs..."

-x-


	5. Put Your Funderwear On

**Title**: Put Your Funderwear On

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: M; het and slash

**Summary**: Fast Five/Transformers. _It had been two years since Toretto and O'Conner had left him laughing in their dust. It was about damned time someone gave him an answer._ 17500 words.

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the world is not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Warnings**: Language and canon-typical violence

**Notes**: Set post-Fast Five, in an ongoing crossover fusion with the Transformers live-action movies; overlaps with the beginning of an AU Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. A few minor details (Carrera, most of the Simmons family tree) were borrowed from licensed tie-in material. Art by firefox1490 posted at AO3 and DW; beta by hiddencait.

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

Luke had to admit, O'Conner and the Torettos were good at what they did. Very good, especially since they had at least two Non Biological Terrestrials along for the ride- and probably more, given how fond that team was of fast, flashy cars. They were like ghosts in every country they passed through; didn't so much as rattle the floor, despite their distinctive combination of looks and anything but demure attitudes.

Trying to track them down was like hunting a handful of needles- not in a haystack, but in a stack of _other_ needles. It was maddening.

It was also the biggest challenge he'd ever faced. Lucas Hobbs never scratched names off his list; not ever, not unless the order came down from his superiors, not until he brought his man in. Somewhere along the line, though, it had become more than duty to bring in the Torettos. It had become a diversion, a chase he looked forward to when nothing else was cooking: a _pleasure_.

So about the fourth time his pursuit derailed after he'd finally started to make headway, he took a good, long look at the merry dance he'd been led, and came to a slightly different conclusion.

They weren't running _from_. Not anymore. They'd started running _to_.

He'd traced some of the team's financial holdings and internet activity to the island nation of Vanuatu, but no immediate physical evidence had turned up there, and the laws of the country had protected their assets from any deeper digging. In Berlin, Toretto's girlfriend had disappeared while Luke and his men were still held up in an unexpected snarl of paperwork at the airport; all she'd left behind were rumors of a woman on a fearsome motorcycle trailed by a small group of special ops soldiers. And by the time he'd gotten word from a bust on a notorious document forger that a small group of the right ages and nationalities had done business in Goa, the crew had already shaken the dust of their beach house and run down garage there from their heels. All he'd found was a scattering of stray fingerprints and a tauntingly placed wrench for confirmation.

And last but not least, Diego Garcia. He'd turned up a solid lead pointing to the islands of the Indian Ocean; and while it was possible that they'd taken refuge in the Maldives, the nearby presence of the joint naval base rumored to house most of NEST's rank and file was difficult to ignore. But he wasn't on the classified access list for the base, and no one would tell him how he might get that inconvenient fact corrected. Luke's every request for clearance to investigate in the area had been shot down as soon as it was filed; and _that_ made no logical sense. NEST should've been willing to cooperate, given the identity- and nature- of his quarry.

Secrets and shadow games. Somewhere along the line, O'Conner must have negotiated a deal for his cars' sake. Nothing else made sense. The only question left was whether NEST planned to keep the NBTs and return him and the Torettos to the States to answer for their many and varied crimes, or if they'd found some other use for the human team members' abilities. Given that they'd availed themselves of Luke's services before, but had since revoked his clearance, he'd guess the latter- but then shouldn't someone have cleared the warrants?

It had been two years since Toretto and O'Conner had left him laughing in their dust. It was about damned time someone gave him an answer.

* * *

><p><strong>Put Your Funderwear On<strong>

Another country, another city, another day. Luke scratched at his beard, frowning past the security barricades at the wreckage that had once been Bruno Carrera's villa. It was a shame, really; from the location in southern Italy, to the old stone that had made up the buildings, the wide sweep of carefully tended lawn, and the smashed fountain that divided the drive, it had been a work of art before someone had stepped where they shouldn't. There was a sense of history there that had taken centuries to build- even an 'uncultured American' like him could feel it- but only a handful of seconds to tear down.

The owner had been a powerful industrialist, according to Luke's intel; wealthy and connected, but more concerned with affairs in Europe than anything further west. The DSS hadn't had any reason to look closely at him before; other three letter agencies had been more interested in his activities. Luke had come to Italy tracking one of the man's guests, a former security officer listed as a survivor of the Mission City event who had also been spotted at the site of a recent 'terrorist attack' in South America. It appeared the two men had had more in common than anyone had thought, given the newly uncovered connections between Carrera and the dustup in Rome- not that the knowledge had come in time to do anyone any good.

Digital security footage from the villa's gates had shown a black luxury car with tinted windows entering the grounds late at night. Shortly thereafter, the cameras had also recorded the unmistakable roar of low flying jet engines. The _carabinieri_ were pretending not to know what to make of the attack, but Luke's clearance had once been high enough that he could guess: it looked like the work of the F22 that had shot up Hoover Dam, destroyed several planes over Mission City, and wrought havoc around the globe a number of times since.

So much for the latest name on Luke's list. Undoubtedly, the alien had come to the villa because of Carrera- but that would probably never be proven, any more than his current target would ever turn up anywhere but the cold case files. There wasn't enough of the place left to stack one brick on top of another, much less confirm the identities of any victims. He'd just have to be satisfied in knowing that there were at least two fewer traitors out there with too much power and too little loyalty to their entire _species_, never mind their nations.

He shook his head, then touched the Bluetooth in his ear to dial D.C. and started walking back toward his truck. His team could join him when they were done gathering every last detail for the official file, but he'd already seen more than enough for a preliminary report. Damned robots. Didn't they have a planet of their own somewhere to fight over? He had enough scum to chase without alien interference muddying the waters.

That included the no name spooks who always seemed to flock in the robots' wake, securing and erasing messes like the one he'd just run into. Luke was almost, _almost_ surprised to notice a stranger in a ball cap and windbreaker leaning against the driver's side door of his LAPV as he approached it. He wasn't dressed like the Italian officers, and he wasn't one of Luke's men; that didn't leave very many alternatives.

"Fuentes? I'm going to have to call you back," he said sharply, hanging up the call, then gestured pointedly at the idiot as he closed on the truck. "You! Step away from the vehicle."

The guy looked up; Luke swept a quick evaluating gaze over him, then frowned in consternation. Five foot ten, with brown hair and hazel eyes, he was younger than he'd seemed at first glance- and much too recognizable to belong to any alphabet agency but one. It was the kid from the news, the one who'd personally taken down NBE One before disappearing into the bosom of the new agency set up to deal with the side effects of that so-called 'industrial accident'. There was no way his presence at the villa was a coincidence.

"Mr. Hobbs? Or is it Agent?" the kid said, aiming a wide smile in his direction. "Agent Hobbs, hi. My name is Sam Witwicky. I know you're probably wondering what I'm doing here-"

"I know who you are," Luke cut him off, crossing his arms over his chest, eyeing the boy with wary suspicion. "_And_ who you work for. If you're after the NBE that did this, the Italian authorities would be the ones to ask, not my team. And I'm still going to have to ask you to step away from the vehicle."

He'd been watching the way the kid stroked the armored side of the eight and a half ton truck, and recalled very vividly the way O'Conner had behaved around Toretto's half-smashed Charger in Rio. He'd read up on the Allspark effects the first time he'd been tasked to chase a Mission City veteran, and he was pretty sure it took a lot of time to affect something that size- but he also knew that O'Conner had defied all the specs in those files, and it would be folly to assume that the kid was average, either.

"You mean this vehicle, here?" Witwicky said, still wearing that aw-shucks grin as he gestured casually at the door he was leaning against. He wasn't even pretending to be intimidated by the extra height or mass Hobbs had on him- another clue, if Luke had needed one, that he spent far too much time around NEST's oversized associates. "Aw, c'mon man, I'm not doing him any harm. I just wanted to meet him while I was here."

Luke's scowl deepened as he closed the last of the distance between them, dropping a hand to rest on the butt of the weapon strapped to his thigh. "You're telling me you're here to meet my _truck_?" he growled.

Witwicky nodded. "Yeah, and I gotta say, he sure does justice to Bestia's stories. She's kind of terrified of him, but kind of admiring, too, you know? I keep telling her he didn't know any better at the time, and she can't hold it against him forever, but they're people just like we are; she keeps saying she wants a rematch."

"_Him?_" Luke objected, not sure what the hell the kid was talking about, but not liking the sound of it one bit. "This is my truck, not one of your NBTs. Whatever you're looking for, kid, it ain't here."

"If you say so," Witwicky said, shrugging, giving one final pat to the Gurkha's door. A faint spark of electric blue light leapt from fingers to metal at the contact- but then he stepped away, raising his open palms in a gesture of surrender. "I'll just get out of your hair, then. Er, beard, I mean. Whatever. If you change your mind, though- if you decide you want to arrange a play date- just give Major Lennox a call. He'll know where to find her."

Play date? Luke blinked, abruptly remembered where he'd heard the name Bestia before, and took another step toward the boy, adrenaline jolting through his system. Bestia was what O'Conner had called Toretto's NBT. That meant Witwicky _knew_ her; and that meant that he knew where _they_ were. "Wait. Kid-"

Witwicky sighed, cheerful expression finally fading a little, though he didn't let that curb his tongue. "My name is not _kid_. It's _Sam_. Or Witwicky; I'm not picky, really, as long as it's not Wikety or Ladiesman Two One Seven. I'm kind of tired of those. But I know how you military types are about the surnames."

Luke raised an eyebrow, giving the kid another onceover. So he knew Luke was ex-military, did he? Lucky guess from spending a lot of time around other servicemen, or had he read up on Luke in particular? And what was with the nicknames? He got Wikety, but the other one? It might've made sense if Witwicky was a little older- once he'd filled out, calmed down a little, and tamed that unruly hair- but he was still in the gawky beanpole stage common to late adolescents. Wishful thinking, probably; and the other matter, therefore, luck. In all likelihood he had minders around somewhere, and had simply slipped their leash when he saw the Gurkha.

Well, wishful thinking was a liability in a world like theirs, and he'd learn that soon enough if he hadn't already. "Okay then, _Ladies' Man_," he drawled, refocusing his attention on the issue at hand. "Say I _was_ interested in a play date. I have a feeling Bestia's driver would have something to say about that, though; it might be a good idea for me to talk things over with him first. You got a number where I can reach him?"

Witwicky snorted, though he seemed more amused than offended. "Right, nice try. Kind of obvious, though. I was under the impression you were actually supposed to be good at this." He shook his head. "But I guess I did kind of come out of nowhere, so I should probably cut you a little slack. And after Megatron? The intimidation thing doesn't so much work with me anyway. Not to knock the muscles, I can tell you work really hard on those; I bet you could pop my skull like a melon if you wanted to. But you don't. Want to, I mean. I can tell."

Luke clenched his jaw as the flow of adolescent bluster washed over him, but Witwicky still didn't blanch at his expression, just kept babbling, posture casual. Luke had run into people who didn't back down to him before, but usually among his contemporaries or superiors; teenagers with Witwicky's strength of personality, who didn't wilt or vent hot air at the first cold shoulder of resistance, were rarer than Hollywood liked to pretend. He was willing to bet most people who met the kid either admired or hated him within the first five minutes.

Personally, Luke was going to have to go with _annoyed_; he was a little harder to impress than most. He narrowed his eyes, then flexed his biceps and ground his palms together in front of his chest, the tough cloth of his fingerless gloves adding an abrasive scraping sound to the daunting picture he knew he made.

"You sure about that?" he growled, adopting an irritated expression.

He was rewarded with the sight of Witwicky's Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, before the kid choked out an awkward laugh. It was the first sign of nervousness Luke had seen from him during the entire encounter. "Ah, hah hah, very funny. Good times. Re-establishing dominance, I get it. And on that note, wow, look at the time! How about we finish this some other day? When I can maybe hide behind Mikaela?"

Luke raised a deliberate eyebrow. "How 'bout we don't and say we did?" he replied, smirking.

"All right, all right, I give up." The kid waved a surrender, then held out a hand, looking irritated but also somehow amused. "Nice to meet you anyway, man. And remember- I told you before, it isn't kid."

Well, if nothing else, he had to respect the boy's sheer balls. Luke eyed him skeptically, then took the offered hand in a firm grip.

That was a mistake. The moment skin touched skin, greenish-brown eyes flashed briefly blue; and the next thing Luke knew, he was blinking up at the sky, aching and twitching like he'd just been tased.

"Uh, oops?" he heard vaguely, as if from a distance. "Hey, Ratchet? Maybe we'd better..."

Son of a bitch, he thought muzzily. Never mind the Gurkha; what the fuck had Witwicky just done to _him_?

* * *

><p>The last time Luke had felt so utterly betrayed by his own flesh, he'd been lying on a street in Rio after catching the backblast of an RPG round. Human bodies were ultimately just cages of meat and bone, but he was used to demanding a hell of a lot from his and getting everything he asked for.<p>

Electromuscular disruption blunted its teeth for no man, though. And whatever Witwicky had jolted him with- ungloved, damn it, he should have noticed the kid wasn't wearing gloves!- had felt more or less the same as his training experience with a heavy duty taser. Except for his Bluetooth turning into a green-eyed little spidery thing and crawling up over his face while he lay there, twitching. Yeah, that was a fuck-you cherry on his sundae of surprise.

"Oh, shit. Agent Hobbs! Chato, Sparks, Norton, the boss is down!"

The rhythmic slapping of soles on pavement echoed nearby as Luke's team finally noticed his predicament. Only a few more seconds passed before knees crashed down in his field of view, and another person's hand slapped across his face. The Bluetooth bot flew off his forehead; he heard a tiny electronic shriek as it passed out of his field of view, followed by another from his waist as his now much smarter phone wriggled out of his pocket in a panic and skittered after it.

He caught a glimpse of a hand going for a holster in his peripheral vision, and forced himself to speak, voice rasping out as he regained control of his muscles. "Wait! Don't shoot."

"Sir, it _attacked_ you," Agent Gonzalez replied firmly. She towered over him from his prone perspective, stance firm, weapon braced in both hands; she'd eased her finger off the trigger at his command, but was still tracking the movements of the tiny new bots with the muzzle as they skittered out of range.

"No- no, they were an effect, not the cause," he groaned, shifting his weight up on a shaky elbow. He was still within arm's reach of the Gurkha, but the kid was nowhere to be seen- which of course was not a surprise, not really. "Anyone see where Witwicky went?"

"_Witwicky_?" Chato's eyebrows shot up. Of Luke's four agents, he was the only one who'd been with him before Rio, and thus had been there when they'd been loaned out to Banacek after Mission City. He wasn't likely to have forgotten that particular name, even if none of the others recognized it. "I saw a guy in a windbreaker head this way earlier, but I didn't get a good look at his face. You sure it was the kid?"

"Yeah," Luke snorted, reaching a hand up to match grips with Agent Norton. The strongest member of the team bar Luke himself, he still went darker in the face with effort as he helped haul Luke to his feet. "Anyone see a yellow and black Camaro roar out of here in the last minute or so? Or a big black GMC Topkick?"

"No, but I did see a rescue Hummer drive by," Chato frowned. "Loud colors, too. Sorry, boss; I should have put it together."

Luke shook his head, disgusted with himself. "No reason you should have," he said. "My mistake; I let down my guard. Kid said he wanted to talk to me about an old case, but he wouldn't have known I was here in the first place if NEST wasn't already on scene investigating the attack."

"Shit," Norton sighed. "NEST, huh? Figures. I'll see if the locals will put out an APB."

"No, don't bother," Luke shrugged a little stiffly as he stared toward the stirring grass where the bots had disappeared. "Like I said, I'm sure there's another of their agents around, anyway. The way they've circled their wagons around that kid since the beginning, I guaran-damn-tee that request won't end up anywhere useful."

"They shouldn't have let him out at all," Chato commented, kneeling where Luke's eyes were tracking and extending a cautious hand. "Not if he's still leaving little ones like this everywhere he goes."

Gonzalez frowned. She was slowly reholstering her weapon, but she still kept half her attention on the verge as she replied, unsettled. "You're acting like those _things_ are alive."

"They are," Chato shrugged. "They're like pets, as far as NEST is concerned. Or kids, depending on the size and processor speed; you don't want to insult 'em in front of the big ones. They mostly don't show up in the wild like this anymore, though, unless someone's been stirring the pot."

"Probably why he _is_ here, then, if they were afraid our guy left things like that behind him to clean up," Agent Sparks spoke up, staring out over the rubble of the villa. Then he turned to fix piercing gray eyes on Luke's face, his slight frame and sharp bayou country features belying the shrewdest of the three new minds on the team. "You all right, boss?"

"I'm standing, aren't I?" he grunted. "Y'all done here?"

"Not much left to find the _carabinieri_ ain't already picked up," Sparks replied with a bland smirk. "Or those hypothetical NEST agents. You want to stick around and see if they show themselves?"

He was tempted; but no. "I'm sure they'll wait 'til we're gone." They'd been _real_ thorough about stonewalling him since he'd started badgering them about O'Conner's disappearance into their net. But he didn't mistake that for turning a blind eye; which meant, come to think of it, that the situation he found himself in could potentially be turned in his favor. "Chato, you found those things yet?"

The agent in question had his hands cupped closed to the ground, and slowly worked his way back to his feet, staring at something shining nestled in amongst his fingers. "Yeah; got 'em right here. Fuck, they're small. At least they're the kind with green eyes, not red. Were these your phone?"

Luke snorted. "Unless there's more of those critters running around? Yeah, they're mine. I'm not looking forward to the paperwork on replacing them."

Gonzalez' frown deepened. "But what does eye color have to do with anything?"

"Never was told why, but all the native ones from Mission City or Sector Seven had red lenses; they were feral little fuckers, defensive as all hell and mostly too dangerous to try and salvage." Luke shrugged. "But the ones that someone actually touched to light them up- they seem to start out friendlier, and they're almost always green-eyed."

"Actually touched? You mean there's another way of making those little bots?" Norton raised his eyebrows.

"Before Mission City? Had to be. But that's how they transfer the energy, now. Or spark. Or whatever they're officially calling it," Luke said, holding one of his own hands out toward Chato, palm upward. "Only time I ever saw a handmade one cause harm, was that P90 O'Conner charged up when we ran him and the Torettos down in Rio. Remember that, Chato? Had to knock him out and shoot the shit out of it to stop it attacking you."

Chato paused in the middle of reaching out to hand the little bots over, a disgruntled expression on his face as he recalled the events of that day. "Not likely to forget, H. But, uh. How pissed _was_ Witwicky, exactly, when he made these? Maybe I should hold on to them."

Witwicky might've been annoyed, but that 'oops' hadn't sounded like the product of blind rage. Good thing, too. Might smooth the negotiations a little when the time came if Luke had cause for offense- but not so much that he couldn't be magnanimous about it. He snorted and twitched his fingers in a 'gimme' motion. "I don't think they'd have let you pick 'em up if that was the case," he assured his friend. "Besides, it's _my_ damned phone."

"Your skin, not mine, boss," Chato shrugged, and extended his hand again.

The little twitching things made some kind of electronic chattering noises when they saw who they were going to, clinging to Chato's hand for a second, but Luke just kept holding out his hand and gestured for the agent to stand still. "Hey," he said soothingly, feeling a little like an idiot as he pitched his voice at the metallic, oversized spiders. "Nothing to be afraid of. I'm not going to hurt you. Just carry you around awhile. You were my phone, remember? I might need to make some calls, but you're free to ride my shoulder the rest of the time. Not your damned fault that the kid doesn't have a lick of sense."

Gonzalez gave a disbelieving huff, and Sparks snickered at him, but Chato shushed them both; good man. If it worked, it worked. If it didn't, well... Luke figured his reputation could survive the hit. But he wasn't going to take guff from his own team about it. Before Rio, they never would have-

He cut that thought off short as a pang shot through him. One thing about the O'Conner and Toretto case- it always brought up memories of those he'd lost in the pursuit. He'd taken his vengeance, buried Wilkes and Macroy, made sure Fusco was taken care of when his injuries disqualified him for further fieldwork, and eventually vetted three new members for his team with Chato's help, but things hadn't been the same since. And maybe that was another reason he was so keen on catching those oil-blooded felons: it would give him closure for the last of the events that had torn his team apart.

Never mind. Gonzalez would learn, and Sparks was just a smartass; he was trainable, and Norton was already pretty solid. Chato would make sure they settled into a coherent unit sooner or later. And in the meantime...

"Well, would you look at that."

He grinned in satisfaction at the little robots as they finally, tentatively crept from Chato's hand to his, then seemed to perk up, taking him at his word to dash up and hook the tips of their metal legs into the shoulder of his vest. It kind of tickled as they ran up over his bare forearm and bicep, and he felt a strange jolt of recognition at the same time- as if _they_ recognized something about _him_, not that that made any real sense.

Ah, well. He'd deal with them later. Time to get back to the airport and catch the next transport home.

He turned to walk around the Gurkha to the driver's seat, but stumbled to a halt almost immediately as sore, temporarily weakened muscles nearly pitched him to the ground. Fucking Witwicky. He caught himself with a hand braced on the side of the truck, then popped an eyebrow at his subordinates to see who'd comment first.

"Maybe you better let one of us drive, Boss," Gonzales tossed herself on that grenade. "Just for today?"

Luke snorted, then fished the keys out of his pocket and flung them to Chato instead. He hadn't let any of the newbies drive yet- and it wasn't the day to change that. It would have to wait for some other time. "You break it, you buy it," he reminded his senior agent, more for form's sake in front of the others than genuine caution, and gestured with his chin toward the driver's seat.

Chato snorted, taking Luke's comment with a grain of salt, and nodded in acknowledgement before walking around to climb in. Luke raised an eyebrow when Gonzales compounded her previous error by actually opening the passenger door for him, but climbed in without comment; he'd find some appropriate paperwork revenge for her later.

He meant to stay alert for the drive back, expecting a call from NEST at any time, but either the kid hadn't told anyone what he'd done or Luke was just that tired; his eyelids started to droop less than ten klicks away from the villa, and he didn't hear another sound until they were already at the airport.

* * *

><p>"Hobbs? Boss?"<p>

Chato's voice drifted its way slowly into his consciousness, breaking Luke away from the last lingering remnants of a very strange dream. He'd felt- warm, somehow; warm clear through in a way that had nothing to do with his environment, but the kind of internal glow that came from good companionship. Eager. Fierce. Even protective: shielding something, or someone, from any possibility of harm, only without the adrenaline rush and bloodthirsty anger that usually went hand in hand with those emotions for him. He didn't understand it; but it had felt good. Kind of relaxing.

What _wasn't_ relaxing was the tone Chato was using. Alarmed and fairly urgent- and now that Luke was paying attention to that, he could hear the others arguing, too, in lower voices behind him.

"Did you try-"

"Of course I tried that, damn it, that was the first thing I-"

"Ouch! What the fuck, man; the handle stung my-"

"-not that way, look, this panel-"

"-military vehicle, sure it doesn't have a-"

"-think Wikety did to it?"

"What the hell's going on?" He broke in over all of them, cracking his eyes open slowly to mute the inevitable headache.

They all shut up in a hurry, and he turned to look over his shoulder enough to see the three agents exchanging glances in the back seating area. "We're at the airport, but the truck won't let us out," Gonzalez filled in for them, and they all gave him sheepish looks.

"Won't _let_ you?" Luke blinked at her, then glanced over at Chato, then finally took note of the man in the generic government suit outside pantomiming through the windshield. The man's mouth was working, but he couldn't hear a thing he was saying. Either the Italian official was putting on some kind of show, or the soundproofing on the Gurkha had suddenly gotten a lot better...

He abruptly put the dream together with the mention of Witwicky, and a wave of foreboding swept through him. "Just wanted to meet him my _ass_. I'm gonna kill that kid," he growled.

"Sir?"

"Never mind." Luke shook his head, then set his hand on the passenger side door handle. As he'd half expected, it didn't resist _him_; all the locks gave way with an emphatic clicking noise.

He grimaced. Yeah, that was nothing less than deliberate. What the hell was _he_ supposed to do with a semi-sentient- or, fuck he hoped not- fully sentient LAPV? He already had enough color on his record from the price tag of his trip to Brazil; he wasn't sure he wanted to know what his superiors would do in response to _that_ piece of news.

The agents exchanged looks again, then popped the doors and practically threw themselves out of the vehicle. Luke watched them go, drawing up in an awkward cluster outside to talk to the foreign agent, and shook his head. Then he followed them out more slowly, patting a hand against the panel of the door as he stepped down.

He picked up a brief burst of **_confused/protect?/stay!_** from that brief contact with the Gurkha, echoed by electronic chirps from the phone that seemed to have found a home in his pants pocket while he slept, and shuddered, trying not to broadcast the automatic spike of uneasy resentment that shot through him.

He'd told O'Conner two years ago that Toretto's car belonged on Diego Garcia with others of its kind, not anywhere within reach of him. The time since had done a little to make the idea of shape shifting metal beings seem like less of an abomination- but still not quite enough for it to seem _normal_. Especially when they were talking to him without words somehow, a side effect O'Conner had never so much as hinted at. But Luke did realize the mechanoids weren't the ones to blame, not even technically; it would do him no good to resent _them_ for it.

"I'll see you again in a few hours," he growled at the truck. "Settle down, and don't give the nice agents any trouble. We'll figure out how this works when we're back in D.C. I don't want you causing waves before that."

It seemed to settle on its shocks, giving an uneasy sigh of noise, but somehow projected resignation as well; he shuddered again, disconcerted, then walked away to face his team. Whatever they saw on his face, they seemed to decide as one not to ask; instead, they fell in with him as he headed for the first of the hoops they had to jump through to leave the country.

They mostly left him alone on the long flight back, too, though they all eyed him curiously when he tapped the phone and asked it to shift back so he could finish the conversation with Fuentes. At least they knew better than to eavesdrop while he was talking to her. He'd fill them in later.

Luke and Monica Fuentes had worked together off and on since she transferred to the DSS. She'd been an undercover Customs agent before that, but her face was too publicly known after the Carter Verone takedown for her to keep that career up long-term. Her path had intersected with Brian O'Conner's at some point during that whole mess, so Luke had picked her brain for information when the ex-agent's name hit his desk, and discovered a healthy respect for her skills and sharp mind in the process. She'd dropped him the clue about Ortiz and had been helping him surreptitiously track NEST operations ever since as part of his support team.

"What were they thinking?" she blurted, as he finished filling her in on the events of the mission. "It makes no sense for NEST to send a civilian- especially _that_ civilian- to the scene of an attack."

"Maybe they didn't- not the military half of the command," he replied. "What about the other half? You told me his records list him with a dual citizenship now- the other nationality might be classified, but I think we can guess what it might be. There had to be other NEST personnel on site, but I didn't see him with anyone else- just that garish rescue Hummer. I think I heard him call it Ratchet; that's the name of one of the First Five."

"A very interesting theory," she replied, "but why would _they_ send him? I don't care what Sparks said, that doesn't make any sense. If NEST is holding Brian and Toretto..."

"That's just it," he interrupted her. "The kid said he was here to meet my truck; and that he'd talked to Bestia. That's..."

"One of the NBTs, I remember," she said, her tone mildly annoyed. "The one Toretto drove- the Charger. I still don't see how all of this is relevant. If he was trying to warn you off, there were much easier ways of doing it."

"He said I might want to arrange a _play date_," he reminded her. "I think that shock he laid on me was an accident- but whatever he did to my truck wasn't. I think maybe O'Conner or Toretto or one of their friends told him their version of events in Rio, and he was indulging in a little payback."

"And their allies went along with it because...?" she challenged him.

"I don't know. As a favor to the Charger? Deterrent? Field trip for the kid? Who the hell knows. He might have just decided to mess with my life on a whim without telling anyone else what he was up to. Because you know if it turns out it _is_ alive, I might as well sign the transfer of property papers myself. There's no way they would let me keep it in D.C."

Fuentes sighed. "Well, I'm sure you'll blow that bridge up when you come to it."

He rolled his eyes at her dry tone. "Very funny."

"Anyway." She cleared her throat. "Speaking of transfer papers- I finally tracked Brian's down."

Luke frowned, sitting up straighter in her chair. "Tell me it's dessert this time, not veggies," he barked.

There'd been some interesting elisions in the file the FBI had handed him on O'Conner- bullshit he hadn't discovered until he'd been on the plane _leaving_ Rio, wondering what the hell he'd missed that had made it so difficult to get a handle on his opponents' movements and motivations. Toretto had been more or less what he'd expected, but not his partner... and even the fact that they _were_ obviously partners, that O'Conner wasn't just there because of the sister, hadn't jived with the facts reported from that original case in L.A. Finding out that O'Conner _hadn't_ been 'overpowered' by Toretto at the end, that he _hadn't_ gone straight from that case to another undercover op in Miami but had instead actually run the streets himself for awhile, had made a lot more sense out of his attitude and obvious comfort with the lifestyle.

O'Conner's claim to have joined Sector Seven after that, though... 'former federal officer in deep cover for five years', no shit, but as one of those spooks? Everyone who'd even heard of them, and that was precious few, had told him the Sector had been a tight-knit nepotistic group. No one had ever just randomly joined that 'do anything and get away with it' government black hole while it had been active, if they weren't family; and afterward, every known member had either joined NEST or gone civilian. Luke hadn't been informed as to the decision process for who'd gone where, but he did know that virtually all of the personnel actually present at Mission City were among the former; only a few had done a runner, and he'd been sent to track down most of those. O'Conner's name hadn't appeared on _any_ of the lists he'd seen.

"Depends on your tastes, I suppose," Fuentes chuckled. "As it happens, one of the Sector agents NEST let go? Seymour Simmons? He's holding something of a grudge. Works for his mother at a deli in New York now."

"And?"

"And don't get your panties in a twist, I'm getting to it. He says he's the great grandson of the founder, one Walter Simmons. And as it turns out, the current Simmons is Brian's second cousin."

"He's _what_?" That did raise Luke's eyebrows. "Why wasn't he with the Sector all along, then?"

"I guess it's something of a pattern with the family. The first Simmons' wife, Clara, left him for another of the First Seven and took their daughter out of the life; as Mrs. Theodore Wells, she had two more daughters. Margo Simmons and _her_ son joined back up with the Sector, but Bill Simmons died before _his_ son was born, and Seymour didn't find them until he was an adult. The Wells girls didn't join up, but three of their children did, and one of those was Brian's father. _He_ was pretty much absentee until he died when Brian was twelve, and Brian's path apparently didn't cross Sector Seven's again until just after Verone's arrest."

"Pretty damned convenient timing," Luke grunted.

"Convenience seems to have been the word of the day where he was concerned," she agreed. "The papers I found? His transfer to the L.A. office after the Sector Seven assignment has CYA stamped all over it. Reading between the lines, it looks like the FBI plucked him out of Mission City without bothering to fill in either the remaining Sector hierarchy _or_ NEST, and Brian fell through the cracks until his picture hit the news again."

"Bullshit. Are you telling me that he could have been with NEST all along?" Luke clenched a fist. "No bus breakout, no manhunt, no massacre..."

"Braga still killing racers in L.A., and Reyes still running Rio?" she replied, dryly. "He's a train wreck, I know, but you have to admit he and his friends did make good catalysts."

"Nothing was worth watching two of my men die in front of me when it _didn't need to happen_," he snarled.

"You're right. I'm sorry," Fuentes sighed. "I was trying to cheer you up: you have an angle, now. Simmons is a crazy bastard, but he and Brian get along all right, if you believe his stories. So how willing do you think he'll be to arrange a meeting with just about the only blood family he has left?"

Luke rubbed a hand over his sweaty scalp and let out a long, frustrated breath. It _was_ an angle to follow, if Thing One and Thing Two didn't give him any traction. "No chance his cousin will go to Diego Garcia instead?"

"Simmons?" Fuentes snorted. "No. NEST made sure he doesn't have access to any of their facilities; he wouldn't say why, but I can only guess he made an even worse impression on them."

"That annoying, huh? Sounds like that runs in the family, too." Luke shook his head.

Fuentes laughed, a deeply amused sound that helped soothe the ashes still steaming in his gut. "Oh, I can't wait 'til you meet him. See you back in D.C., then?"

"I'll be back in the office in a couple of days," he agreed. He paused a moment, then added, "Thanks, Fuentes."

"Just doing my job," she said sweetly, and hung up.

Sass _and_ a hard worker. Luke shook his head at himself, then took Thing One back out of his ear, tucked it into his pocket with Thing Two, and turned his attention back to the rest of his team.

* * *

><p>There wasn't any kind of a message waiting for him when he did get back to D.C., and Luke started wondering if the kid had reported what he'd been up to at all. Maybe he'd been right about the alien robots being the ones responsible for that particular appearance, not the human military half of the operation. But if that was the case, wouldn't they have been even more concerned about the tiny new 'bots Witwicky's interference was responsible for creating? He had to've known what he'd done. Nothing about the situation made any sense.<p>

OF course, nothing about NEST had ever made much sense to Luke. Trying to keep a lid on the secret after everything that had happened was just going to end up killing more people, not less, no matter what scary scenarios their public relations arm had come up with regarding the revelation of aliens. At the rate things were going, _that_ was pretty much inevitable; better to roll out the facts before events did it for them.

He did have a thing or two left to try before going with Fuentes' angle, though. First and foremost: he routed a call through to NEST command at the Pentagon to dutifully report his discovery of two micro-NBTs. He wouldn't mention the Gurkha over a public channel- he hadn't had time to corner it alone again, and he was a little wary of springing any trap Witwicky might have been trying to set- but the little Things were pretty harmless, by any scale he cared to use. And it would be a topic of conversation NEST wouldn't be able to avoid, unlike O'Conner.

Though it appeared they _could_ delay it. Luke's first day back behind his desk after the mission to Italy was a Wednesday, and he bounced off voicemail after voicemail before finally leaving an actual message with a harried young officer. The man promised Luke that he would get a call back as soon as was expedient, but didn't let him draw out the conversation, even when Luke used his most commanding tone of voice.

The screen the office kept always tuned to CNN put that call in a little more perspective a few hours later. There'd apparently been a 'toxic spill'- aka 'industrial accident'- in Shanghai after ten p.m. local time, and the blurry, low resolution footage was full of an enormous dual wheeled machine crashing along an overpass, crushing every car it encountered. It was after dark there, twelve hours ahead of D.C., but the big blue and red figure dangling from its chassis was impossible to mistake even amid the nighttime chiaroscuro of streetlamp and shadow. NEST had tracked another enemy alien to ground- and once more made a hash of capturing it. It was almost as though their quarry were making a _point_ of forcing their interactions into the public eye.

Luke was reminded of facing Toretto down amid a crowd of racers in Rio, and curled his lip at the newsfeed. Any team could fall for that sort of trick once, but Shanghai wasn't even the second incursion to have blown up so badly in the last year. Didn't anyone in charge in 'botland have a decent grasp of hunting tactics?

Never mind; it wasn't his business. _His_ business looked to have a few days of downtime and sorting files, maybe a little domestic work, before the next mission; his team didn't always chase bad guys. Sometimes they protected visiting foreign dignitaries, a more usual DSS duty on home soil.

And since he was commonly known to work very late at his desk... he might finally be able to make time to talk with his Gurkha without someone overhearing him. Or at it; though he was beginning to resign himself to the fact that it was probably _with_. Damn that kid; Luke really didn't want to have to deal with eight and a half tons of sentient armored patrol vehicle. The tools of a man's trade were supposed to do what he wanted them to, _when_ he wanted them to, not act with a mind of their own.

What if it- or he, if Luke took the kid literally- decided he wasn't bound by Luke's orders and went his own way? It wasn't as though Luke would be able to manhandle the truck into obedience as he could most other human agents if he had to; the Gurkha outweighed him by such an enormous factor it would never even notice any attempt he made to physically reseize control. It might have unlocked its doors at his touch at the airport in Italy... but only after locking the entire team in first. That was an ominous sign.

He _should_ just order the thing scrapped. But... despite how uneasy they made him, despite the fact that he was deeply suspicious of their motives, he hadn't needed Witwicky to tell him that the NBTs _were_ feeling, thinking beings. He'd seen that in Rio. He couldn't just _kill_ one, if it even sat there and let him do it. And... it was _his_. He'd lost half his team to Reyes' men, but O'Conner's NBTs had saved the others, and his truck had got _him_ through it; there was just a slight possibility he might have grown irrationally, vaguely attached to the vehicle in the process. Even if it _had_ unexpectedly become a robot.

Luke waited until the office was dark, then manned up, strapped his Smith & Wesson Competitor back to his thigh, and headed down to the garage where the LAPVs were parked when not in use.

It wasn't until he was walking out of the stairwell, heading for the gray, boxy beveled shape of his particular truck that something else abruptly occurred to him. When Witwicky had touched him, both parts of his phone had transformed- but the weapon in his holster hadn't. He frowned, tapping his thumb against the grip of the sidearm, and reminded himself to revisit that later. Then he glanced up at the nearest cameras, reassured himself his face wouldn't be visible on any of the security feeds, and opened the passenger door.

If he'd been holding out any hope he'd been hallucinating earlier, the rev of the engine turning itself over, the flare of the headlamps reflecting off the concrete wall, and the crackle of static as the radio activated would have disillusioned him. Luke frowned, feeling an unaccustomed sense of concern and loneliness bubble up behind his breastbone, and reached out to lay a hand on the dash. The feeling lifted a little at the touch- and the engine slowed too, sending his own stomach churning with disquiet.

He _was_ picking up something entirely nonverbal from it; that hadn't been his imagination. He'd never heard of that happening before, not from any agents he knew to have interacted with NBEs or NBTs. And NEST had definitely never circulated any information about such side effects, just instructions on what survivors of the Mission City 'accident' should do if they inadvertently started sparking machinery to life in their wake- most of which boiled down to _don't_, and _wear gloves that cover the entire hand_.

Luke flexed his hands in the half-gloves he habitually wore, and cleared his throat.

"So. You got a designation I should use, or what?" he asked, feeling just a little ridiculous.

There was a brief silence; then an embarrassed feeling accompanied by the nonverbal equivalent of a headshake. "Creators assign designations to newsparks," the radio said, in a decidedly masculine voice. There was a definite emphasis on the first and last words.

"And Witwicky didn't stick around," Luke snorted. "Figures."

It made a noncommittal, staticky noise. "Agent Hobbs could choose a designation?" it suggested.

If they weren't 'born' knowing their own names unless someone programmed them in... that meant Bestia had to have been O'Conner's deliberate choice for Toretto's ride: the Italian translation of the word Beast. Interesting. Kind of a masculine name for a feminine car. He'd have to look up Nesso in a dictionary later, to find out what O'Conner had been calling the other one, but he thought he remembered it had been a 'she', too.

That gave him an irreverent idea of what to call the Gurkha; also a little gender inappropriate, assuming that the robot idea of gender was even analogous to the human one in the first place, but he couldn't think of one that would suit better after Witwicky's hints about 'play dates'.

"Belle," he said, one corner of his mouth tugging up in amusement. "I think I'll call you Belle. And you can call me Hobbs."

"Hobbs," it agreed. Then it added, with overtones of curiosity: "What is the significance of Belle? Search results feature an animated human female with a yellow textile covering."

Luke blinked at that, humor transmuting into surprise. "Wait. You have access to the _Internet_?" No wonder the 'bots tailored their shapes and behaviors so quickly to human norms... at least, when it suited them. They had it all right at their fingertips.

Belle sounded almost smug as he replied. "The Allspark adapts."

...Yeah, Luke wasn't even going to touch the use of the present tense in _that_ statement, though it had interesting implications for Witwicky's appearance. He filed that for later and addressed a more immediate question. "You able to contact any other robots with that communications equipment of yours?"

"Yes. But I have not chosen one of their factions," came the matter of fact, not entirely helpful answer.

"Huh." He frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. He hadn't even anticipated that it could have just contacted the NEST bunch on its own; but at least it hadn't contacted the enemies of its kind, either. "So you haven't heard of Bestia?"

There was another brief pause, one Luke mentally filled in this time with images of flashing browser windows. Or did it even need a browser? "Designation unclear," the radio concluded.

"You'll find out." Luke could say that much for a fact. "Let's just say she's the Beast to your Beauty. In the meantime... I need to ask, what are your intentions? You plan on choosing one of those factions, or what? You can't exactly stay here indefinitely."

"State your reasoning," Belle interrupted him then, inexplicably disgruntled.

"My reasoning for what?" he replied, frowning at the shift in tone.

"Why can't I stay? You are DSS. My registration is DSS. The Diplomatic Security Service is therefore my faction."

"Except for one small, inconvenient fact: that the only government _faction_ that takes NBTs- that's robots like you- is NEST, not the DSS," Luke informed him. Strange; he hadn't expected loyalty from it. What _had_ Witwicky been playing at?

"You do not want a guardian?" it- _he_- replied, sounding stung.

Luke cast his eyes up toward the ceiling of the truck. How the fuck was this even his life? Wanting to comfort a goddamn talking piece of machinery. "Let's just give it a little time to sink in," he said gruffly, "and see what happens. But you can't let anyone else know you can talk until I clear it. Understood?"

Belle was silent for a long moment. Then the engine shut off suddenly, taking the headlamps with it. Shadow fell in the cab of the Gurkha, everything going dark for a moment while his eyes readjusted to the normal parking structure light levels, and he was picking up nothing extra from his new sixth sense but a nebulous feeling of dread. "Or, uh, you could just leave and go join one of those factions?" he added, uneasily.

"You wish for me to stay?" the radio rasped out, static cropping up to make the words almost unintelligible.

Luke took a deep breath, debating with himself, then nodded. "Yeah. I do, okay? I'd rather you stayed here."

The sense of oppression eased, and the passenger door popped open of its own accord. "Then I will stay," Belle added with finality, and the radio shut off with an emphatic click.

Luke rolled his shoulders, working out the tension that had suddenly knotted them up, as he took his cue and got out. Negotiating with his own damned vehicle. What next?

He shook his head and headed for his civilian SUV. Time to pack things up and go home- get a little shut eye while he still could. Because as complicated as things had been, he had a feeling that they were about to get even worse.

* * *

><p>Friday finally brought a call back from the Pentagon- and a somewhat confusing interview with another distracted officer under the NEST umbrella. The guy took down a description of Luke's phone and asked that Luke send him a digital pic of both transformed and original parts for the tracking database. Then he told Luke to call back if it were to suddenly adopt a Decepticon insignia, comparative image to follow, and to have a nice day.<p>

"Wait," Luke couldn't help but ask him. "Don't you want me to bring them in?"

"Ah, no. Not if they have green optics," the guy said. "They're already government property, you said? If we tried to track down every single microbot created in the last two years and remove them to Diego Garcia, the base would be overrun. As long as they pose no threat, they're generally better put to use in the field."

Luke frowned at that. Better put to use? No, if he had to bet, there was something a bit more practical behind it. "And that way you don't have to issue replacement equipment," he concluded with a snort.

"Good day, agent," the young man said- and that was that.

Luke clenched his jaw as Thing One made an end call sound in his ear, nerves crackling with a burst of irritation- then yelped as his watch suddenly fell off his wrist, clasp pinching the skin as it twitched loose.

He stared at the bared skin for a moment, wondering how the hell he'd caught the band on something without noticing it- then felt that uneasy roil in his gut again when the watch face suddenly flipped _itself_ over on the floor, linked band unwinding itself into a caterpillar of little metal legs. "Son of a bitch," he muttered.

Thing One chirped in his ear again, then unmade itself from Bluetooth form without his input, chittering its way down his neck, dark tee shirt, and khakis to land on the floor next to the inexplicably transformed accessory.

What, had he just not noticed it transforming at the same time as the other accessories? But no; he'd been wearing a different watch that day. Witwicky _couldn't_ have touched it.

"Boss?" he heard Chato ask in confusion, as he walked into Luke's office with a file in his hands.

Luke raised a shushing finger in his direction, then stooped to lay his hand palm-up on the floor, coaxing Thing One back onto it. The transformed Bluetooth made a distressed noise, but obeyed. The watch, on the other hand, looked up at him with, fuck, little red lights glaring from its face-

-just before Chato crunched it under his boot heel, frowning. "The hell was that, H?" he asked.

Luke stared at the crunched, sharp-edged little thing as the light in its optics faded, then at his hands, thinking about gloves, selective activation, and the jolt to his system, and felt the edge of a more ominous realization incoming, like air pressure dropping in advance of a storm front.

There'd be time for that later, though. Thing One and Thing Two had unexpectedly failed to get him past the NEST cordon- and of course it was just when his plan failed that he discovered he might need to reach them for personal reasons as well as professional. Plan B it was, then: one weekend trip to New York City, coming up.

"Trouble," he told Chato. "That deli in Brooklyn- D. Cappucio and Simmons. Get the location from Fuentes and plot me a route; I'm headed there tomorrow."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Chato raised his eyebrows in concern.

"Best lead we've got right now," Luke shrugged at him.

Chato considered that, then nodded. "Take Fuentes with you," he said, then held out the file he'd been carrying. "She's talked to the guy before, and she blends better than the rest of us."

"I'll take that under advisement," Luke said, frowning as he took the sheaf of papers.

Chato held onto his edge for just a moment longer, though, waiting until Luke looked up to meet his eyes. "Take the Gurkha, too," he said, grimly. "I got a feeling about this one, Boss."

"An anti-personnel vehicle on the streets of New York?" he replied incredulously, popping an eyebrow. "It's not exactly built for stealth."

"Whatever that kid tracked you down for- you're going to meet with another civilian involved with that world. I don't like your odds of running into another one of those things out there," the agent shrugged.

Luke sighed. "Point," he said. Then he waved Chato out of his office, scooped up the tiny, angry robot's corpse, and started digging through his inbox for an interoffice manila envelope to repurpose. He might not need the proof- but if he did, he didn't want it to look like he was carrying around something valuable.

It _was_- just not to the right kind of people. He shuddered and tucked the envelope into his briefcase.

That envelope was the only thing he removed from Belle when they parked on the street outside the corner deli nearly twenty four hours later. The drive had been fairly smooth, apart from the usual traffic; the only thing remotely notable about it had been the occasional sighting of a sleek new Corvette Stingray Concept in the rear view mirror. Every single alien he'd heard about that hadn't gone for a war machine or construction disguise had adopted a flashy car form, and the gorgeous lines of the silver racer raised his suspicions. It never did anything overtly threatening, though, and passed them and vanished a while before they reached Brooklyn.

The deli itself, somewhat to his surprise, wasn't just a façade; it was a genuine, briskly functioning business. There were at least three people behind the counters when they walked in: an older woman in her sixties or seventies with obviously dyed hair, a young man chopping meat with very bad teeth, and a flint-eyed, sharp voiced guy working the till who snarled at the latest customer as though he took particular offense at the details of his order. Older than Luke, wiry, clearly used to giving orders, and maybe a few bullets short of a magazine?

Luke cocked an eyebrow at Fuentes. "That the guy?"

She smirked in return. "That's the guy," she said, then strolled into the shop ahead of him, all tight skirt, pale blouse setting off tan skin and taut curves, and solidly constructed high heels at least three inches tall somehow complemented by the badge clipped to her belt.

Special agents didn't come any hotter than that- and it didn't take long for Simmons to notice. He did the ground-up appraisal as she sauntered up in front of the register, cutting off two other customers, and didn't even bother to hide the appreciation in his gaze.

"Well hello," he said. "What'll it be, ma'am? You here for the daily special?"

Fuentes braced her arms on the counter and leaned forward just a little, presenting a façade all promise and distraction. "Mmm, no. I'm here for Seymour Simmons. Heard of him?"

Not the most sophisticated technique. But very, very effectively delivered. "Heard of him? 'Course I've heard of him," Simmons said, grinning at her. "He's me."

She cut him off before he could elaborate that theme, straightening up again in a way that begged the eye to caress her shapely form. "_Former Agent_ Seymour Simmons?" she clarified, in a tone almost a purr.

Simmons' grin shaded briefly toward a leer- then suddenly fell away entirely, his eyes sharpening on her with an abrupt focus that had nothing to do with her body. Maybe he _had_ been a government agent, after all. "Ma? Ma, I'm taking my smoke break!" he yelled toward the back of the shop, darting his eyes past Fuentes to take in Luke's hulking form.

"What do you mean, you're taking your smoke break?" the older woman's commanding voice carried from the back of the deli. "You don't smoke!"

"Yeah, well, I'm thinking about taking it up!" he yelled back, then waved over the guy with the bad teeth. "Take over the register, wouldja? I'll be right back."

The former Sector Seven employee was wearing a ridiculous outfit with some kind of white chef's coat, a blue scarf, and a flat white hat; he scraped the hat off as he walked past Fuentes and Luke toward the door, dropping it carelessly on a table and eyeing them sidelong. "Not in here," he hissed, leading them out onto the sidewalk.

It was scarcely less public outside, but he started stomping down the sidewalk like a man with an urgent mission, checking everywhere around him with quick, darting glances. He wasn't running, though, or heading for a car, so Luke didn't think he was trying to lose them. He and Fuentes trailed easily in Simmons' wake until the guy finally found a niche between buildings out of the main foot traffic that fit whatever criteria he'd been looking for, then turned to glare at them, narrowing his eyes.

"_You're_ the one I talked to on the phone the other day," he accused, pointing at Fuentes.

"That's right. Special Agent Monica Fuentes, with the DSS. Pleased to meet you," she said, dredging up a bright smile and offering him a hand as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

He snorted at her, ignoring the hand. "Diplomatic Security Service. Federal law enforcement arm of the Department of State- the only such agents who are _also_ members of the Foreign Service. Real convenient excuse for all those other questions you were asking- _if_ you're really the same woman. How do I know that's really true, and that's not just some tinfoil badge on your belt? You could be working for one of those amateur hour blog operations like The Real Effing Deal for all I know."

"You seemed willing enough to take my word for it the other day," she wheedled him.

"You thought I was just taking your word for it? Hah!" Simmons spat, pointing a finger at her again. "And you never said you'd have _this_ guy with you. Who's he? Some other supposed special agent?"

Luke was tempted to pull his .44; but that kind of cowboy behavior wouldn't fly as well on the streets of New York as it did in the favelas of Brazil. He pulled Thing Two out of his pocket instead, flattening his palm in a signal for it to transform. "This credential enough for you?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow as it clicked and whirled, shifting from a sleek touchscreen phone into a many-limbed metallic creature in the space of a breath.

The effect on Simmons was profound; he stiffened, taking two jerky steps backward. "It's one of _them_," he hissed. "Are you crazy, bringing that thing here? It's been listening to every word we've said!"

"Relax," Luke snorted. "It's mine. And according to its big brother, they're supposed to choose a faction before they share data with others of their kind. Civil war being what it is and all."

"Big brother?" Fuentes hissed through the corner of her mouth, eyes sharp on him.

"Later," he promised, then pulled his hand slightly back in surprise when Simmons got over his startlement and leaned forward closely, peering at Thing Two from a distance of a couple of inches.

"It doesn't _look_ any different than any other I've seen," he said skeptically, "except its eyes aren't red, and it's not shooting everything in sight. Huh. But then, I haven't seen many of them since Banacek told me I had too much _baggage_ and kicked me to the curb. Baggage, he says!" Simmons snorted. Then he straightened up, eyeing Luke with a frown. "And who exactly are you, then, big boy?"

"Special Agent Luke Hobbs," Luke bared his teeth at him, stroking the spine of Thing Two to coax it back into phone shape and tuck it back to safety. Good thing it was so responsive; he barely had to hint what he wanted it to do before it did it, greatly reducing the likelihood of causing a scene. "Heard of me?"

Simmons' eyes widened, and he looked Luke up and down again, as if comparing him to some description. "Yeah, as matter of fact, I have. You're the lunatic who's been chasing my cousin Brian, aren't you? Not that he doesn't need taking down a peg or two- just because _he_ was touched by the Allspark and I wasn't, they take him in, but refuse to listen to a word I have to say? I've spent my whole adult _life_ looking for these things, but do they believe me when I tell them there's still dozens of them scattered around the world that have been here for _ages_? One of them saved my mother's life before I was born, for Pete's sake! But _no_, I pissed off the kid, and _Brian_ figures out how to schmooze him, and that's that."

"So he _is_ in contact with Brian," Luke said grimly, seizing that little tidbit.

Simmons' expression went even shiftier, if that was possible. "Maaaaybe," he drew the word out, "and maybe not. Depends on who wants to know, and why."

"You do realize that there are active warrants still out on Brian and his friends?" Monica put in, gently.

Simmons snorted. "On Brian O'Conner, maybe. That might have been the name they hired him under, but he served as a Wells. It's something of a tradition in the First Seven families- otherwise I might have been a Carlson. Can you imagine? Seymour Carlson?" The man shuddered visibly. "As sure as there've been robots on this planet since the wheel was cutting edge tech, he's going by Brian Wells again, now. Don't know anything about his pals, but you can bet they're leaving the warrants out on his civvie alias for some long-game reason."

Luke rubbed at his temple. "This just gets better and better," he growled. "So how do I get in touch with him- or Toretto- to prove it? If you're right, they're not going to let me arrest them- but forgive me if I don't just take your word for it. I want it straight from the horse's mouth- _and_ their babysitter, the Major Lennox that Witwicky mentioned when he crashed my scene."

Simmons scowled, a reddish flush creeping over his cheeks. "So you've actually _met_ Alien Boy and his bodyguards, then? What, was he trying to recruit you to NEST? Is _that_ your real reason for being here? Find out if Seymour Simmons is gonna be a problem? See if I have all the missing files? 'Cause if you actually wanted information on Brian, I'm not the one to ask, you know. He doesn't talk to _me_ much anymore. Too busy with his new friends."

Luke parsed all of that as half excuse, half bluster, and half leading conversation, and retrieved the manila envelope of mashed, transformed watch he'd tucked under his arm. "Only if recruitment methods typically involve a guy who _wasn't_ at Mission City spontaneously creating things like _this_ when he's angry," he said, holding it out to Simmons.

Simmons' eyes widened dramatically as he looked into the envelope; he started to stick his fingers in, then snarled when Luke pulled it back out of reach.

"I'm only showing it to you because I'm not wearing anything to use as a better demonstration," Luke added, glaring at him in a not so subtle warning. "I was feeling pretty much _just_ like this when it jumped off my wrist yesterday."

"That _is_ a little more literal a recruitment method than I was thinking of," Simmons admitted, reaching for the envelope again. Luke let him take it that time, watching him pore over the tiny crushed 'bot; then the man glanced at the pocket where Luke had stowed Thing Two again and sucked a sharp breath.

"That other little guy. You said it was yours. As in, it was on you the first time it transformed?"

"It was- _is_- my phone," Luke confirmed. "Where the fuck else would it have been?"

Simmons' eyes gleamed as he came to some conclusion, staring into the envelope again. "Let me guess, you shook hands with the kid or something just before that happened?"

Luke exchanged a glance with Fuentes.

"And if he did?" she asked him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Figures," Simmons said, sounding strangely bitter, then turned suddenly back toward the deli, pushing past Luke and Fuentes to storm back up the sidewalk.

"What figures?" Luke growled after him.

Simmons stopped in his tracks, glaring back over his shoulder and waving the envelope angrily. "If he did to you what I think he did? Which is grossly unfair, let me tell you; I could have used a little of it years ago! All that power in the hands of a punk kid; might've known it would all come down to this in the end. You ought to have a pretty nice Gamma signature right about now, but since I don't happen to carry my detector on me, you're gonna have to follow me to the meat locker to be sure."

Luke exchanged a glance with Fuentes again, and she shrugged.

"Fine," he sighed, and followed Simmons back to his mother's deli.

* * *

><p>Apparently, Simmons hadn't been speaking metaphorically when he'd mentioned the meat locker. But as he led them back into the deli, he seemed to abruptly realize that Luke and Fuentes were both still employed by the government that cut him loose, not to mention in contact with the department that shafted him, and prickled up like a stuck porcupine. He corralled his mother, aimed her in their direction, and then disappeared into the back while they were still fending off her suspicious questions about just why they had tracked down her son.<p>

Sharp woman, Mrs. Simmons. Luke had no doubt that she knew all about whatever her son had hidden in the walk-in freezer; if she'd been around a planet-bound NBE long enough for it to save her life decades before Mission City, she had to have been Sector Seven once too, and she still possessed the fierce determination it would have taken for a woman to survive in the male dominated hierarchy of the times. She didn't buy Fuentes' cover story about 'looking for Seymour's cousin' for one minute.

Fortunately, Simmons didn't dawdle long in his secret hidey hole. He stalked back into the deli before his mother had got more than half of Fuentes' career history out of her, kicked the only remaining customer out, and flipped the CLOSED sign into place on the door. The customer didn't offer more than a token protest, in contrast to Simmons' mother; probably because of what he was carrying in his hands. It looked like an old fashioned Geiger counter- a device Luke knew was used to measure radiation.

Mrs. Simmons' eyebrows shot up at the sight of it and she pursed her lips at her son, glancing between him and the two agents. "Must you, Seymour?" she said, sourly.

He scowled back at her. "Ma," he said, clearly exasperated, layers of old arguments festering in his tone.

"Well, I'm sure you know what's best, son," she sniffed. "Call me when you're done taking bread out of your mother's mouth." Then she headed for the back room, chivvying the other employee along with her, with a distinct air of washing her hands of the entire situation.

Simmons looked momentarily stung, but shook it off quickly and switched on the device, extending its wand in Fuentes' direction. It ticked a little on her, enough to make Simmons frown, but evidently not enough to trip whatever criteria he was looking for- but when he turned to aim it at Luke, it erupted into a storm of crackling.

"Ah HAH!" Simmons said, grimly triumphant. "Definitely more than could be accounted for by transfer, or even the presence of those microbots. You, my friend, are a _source_ of Gamma radiation."

"And what exactly is _that_ supposed to mean?" Luke asked him, frowning.

It couldn't mean- what he thought it meant. He'd been clear on the other coast when the aliens had first revealed themselves; he'd never so much as seen the Allspark before its destruction.

"What do you _think_ it means?" Simmons fired back scornfully, switching the little meter off now that he'd proven his theory. "You know how the aliens are powered by things called sparks, right? Kind of like a human's bioelectric field, only concentrated into a single point that can be seen with the naked eye. The Allspark was apparently like a giant well of the things; it was one of the ways they reproduced themselves. When Alien Boy blew it up- they say it left a little piece of itself in everyone within range. I don't get the metaphysics, but it's like their souls have an extra dimension now. They can create little guys like your watch, little baby bots, if they don't take the proper precautions- and the energy regenerates, fed by the human's energy, _unlike_ the original Allspark. But they're limited in scale, and didn't get any knowledge with it. The thing about Wikety, though- scuttlebutt says he got a teeny little splinter of the Cube stuck under his skin, and everything that didn't blow outward? Went into him. I wouldn't be surprised if he can do everything the original Allspark could, and then some."

"Like imbue other human beings with its energy," Fuentes said, a worried line creasing her forehead.

"Yep," Simmons said, bitterly. "Typical, I tell you. I did as much as any of them that day; Keller would never have been able to contact the outside world if not for me. Plus, my family's been looking into these things since before my great granddaddy talked to Wikety's, a hundred years ago! But am I in the inner circle? Huh?"

"So you're saying _I_ affected not only the watch- but the phone, too," Luke broke into the rant. That _would_ explain a few things. As new as it was to him, the effect must have been too weak to affect more than his phone when he'd collapsed- and Witwicky hadn't reported the microbots because they hadn't been his responsibility. Hell, he might not even have realized what he'd actually done to Luke.

Fuck. He was either going to have to get over his uneasiness fast or invest in antacids, because this apparently wasn't going to blow over: the kid had wrenched his life permanently off course. By _accident_. Maybe it was time he cut O'Conner a little slack- because if this was how Toretto's luck dealt with his opponents, unlikely carom shots off the angles of fate, it was no wonder the cop had fallen into Toretto's orbit.

"Better buy yourself some new gloves," Simmons said sourly, unwittingly paralleling Luke's thoughts, "and be sure and tell that fickle cousin of mine 'hi' when you see him."

"You're going to tell us where he is, then?" Fuentes leapt on that tidbit.

Simmons snorted. "Hah; no. But you'll see him soon enough. Like NEST will let a guy like with _your_ experience wander around loose when they have an excuse to bring you in. Unless you're in someone's bad books. Want I should put in a word for you with Banacek?"

Luke shot down that eager, wild-eyed offer with a firm shake of his head. If NEST wasn't already aware of what had happened, he wasn't about to tell them. "No, that's all right. You've been helpful enough already."

Simmons narrowed his eyes suspiciously at that, but let it go. "Then I'd appreciate it if you make like a tree and get out of here, before my mother gets even angrier than she is already. The world could be ending around here, and she still wouldn't be any happier about this kinda thing."

Fuentes gave Luke a long, evaluating look, then pulled a card from a skirt pocket and tucked it into Simmons' hand. Even when she wasn't trying, there was an inherent sensuality to her movement; Luke let it distract him for a second, then shook it off, already grimly planning the trip back to D.C.

"Thank you for your time," she said, smoothly. "If you do hear anything else from your cousin, I'd appreciate it if you would give him this number. We've wasted enough of the taxpayers' money chasing him already; if we can close his file, even unofficially, it would be of great benefit to both our agencies."

The card looked innocuous enough, but Luke knew it featured her private number and her name, not Luke's office at the DSS; Brian O'Conner might not respond to an overture from _him_, but he very well might for Monica Fuentes, particularly once he knew she was working with Luke's team. Both he and Toretto were known for being protective of those they'd claimed as friends, and it wouldn't be surprising for them to sound her out.

Simmons made a skeptical face, but took the card before shooing them out of the deli.

Luke stopped outside for a moment, squinting up at the sunlit buildings, the press of humanity around them, and the blocky shape of Belle, waiting at the curb across the street. It was a surreal juxtaposition, and the disquiet that had been tingling along his nerves since his first sight of Sam Witwicky transmuted suddenly into something a little more productive: a prickly, galvanizing anger that sharpened his thought processes considerably.

He might have been hijacked into their world, but as God was his witness, he was going to live in it on _his_ terms, not according to anyone else's. He scowled as his scalp started prickling in the sunshine, beading up with droplets of sweat, then glanced down at the concerned face of the woman beside him.

"We done here?" she asked, quietly.

"For now," he replied. "Though if I don't get the answers I'm looking for directly, I might well come back and find an excuse to raid that meat locker. I'm getting sick of the bullshit runarounds."

She smiled wryly. "Thinking about blowing up that bridge after all?" she asked.

He snorted. "Think you could stand taking a transfer back to Customs after they fire me? Maybe you can harass the big guys for transporting weapons of mass destruction over intergalactic borders."

Fuentes' smile widened a little at the implied assumption that she'd still be involved, and ran with the theme. "I wonder if they even have customs officers in their culture? I suppose they must have, back on their world- but I don't think I ever heard any occupations mentioned outside of the war."

"Well, it looks like we're going to get the chance to find out." He shook his head, then headed for Belle, automatically glancing up and down the street for any signs of undue interest.

The street was clear in that moment- but it didn't stay that way for long. He and Fuentes were still traversing the crosswalk when a shift in the flow of traffic drew Luke's eye to a shining silver car a block away. There was no mistaking the racer that had followed them to New York; even if the vehicle itself hadn't been fairly unique, the license plates were identical. He tapped Fuentes on the arm, jerking his chin toward their probable pursuer, then picked up speed, hurrying onto the crowded sidewalk.

They were still several yards from Belle when a black and white Saleen roared into the intersection where the Stingray was waiting for the light to change, sirens screaming and lightbar in full whirl. Luke thought for a confused second that it might be after the potential NBE- then belatedly realized it was probably an NBE itself, as it turned tighter than any Earth-made vehicle could, the image of its driver flickering distinctively, and aimed straight for the Gurhka.

"Belle!" he yelled, as little spikes started growing out of the Saleen's grille. "Protect yourself!"

Then he glanced over at Fuentes- and found her already chivvying civilians out of the way, dark eyes and full lips set in fierce determination. Perfect. He turned back to the action just in time to catch a view of the Stingray erupting upward, silver surfaces flashing like mirrors in the sunlight as it stood up into a two legged figure with wheeled skates for feet and blades in its hands longer than Luke was tall.

Belle was transforming, too: a more ponderous production as he figured out where everything went for the first time, groaning amid the whirr of moving parts and clank of cabled muscles and armored limbs stretching into place. Luke stared almost in awe at the wide expanse of armored plates dropping into place across his chest, the turret armament now sprouting in enlarged form from his fists, and the wide, protective stance he adopted as he braced for the Saleen's arrival. He wasn't trying to get out of the way or run for cover. He was doing what Luke would have done. Luke grinned fiercely as he drew his weapon to support him, wishing he'd unpacked that rifle armed with sabot rounds- he'd been worried it would give Simmons the wrong impression.

The Saleen sprang just as Belle finished settling his feet, rapidly shifting into an angular, spike-covered silver and black form mid-leap. Its red eyes flashed as it brought its cannons to bear, barking out a harsh command: "Surrender now, Mutations!"

Belle ignored it and _leapt_, batting the cannons aside as he tackled the enemy to the asphalt, safely out of the way of any pedestrians- though not out of traffic: an old Ford pickup groaned under the impact of the former cruiser's back, disgorging a panicked pair of guys in overalls to add to the crowd of screaming bystanders.

"It would only be polite of me to return the invitation!" Belle ground out as the two forms wrestled, his much bulkier form momentarily pinning the Saleen as he pounded one of its cannons against the ground and Luke emptied all his rounds at it in support.

Belle's victory only lasted for a few heartbeats, though; the apparent Decepticon quickly proved its millennia of wartime experience as it turned the tables, trapping Belle under _it_ and wrenching the cannon arm free to stab at Belle's chest with long, wickedly clawed fingers. "You are no match for me!" it growled.

"No, but I am!" the Stingray laughed triumphantly, pouncing on it from behind. The Saleen howled, caught off guard; it must have been focusing too tightly on Belle and Luke to have noticed the other coming. One of the Stingray's blades bit deep into the struts and cables of the enemy's right shoulder, severing some kind of fluid line in the process. Then it swiveled tightly on its wheeled feet to repeat the chop from the other side, arching over Luke and Belle in a move out of some otherworldly heavyweight ballet, delicately severing several claws from the reaching hand and then kicking the Saleen precisely in the chest.

"Sideswipe!" the cop car roared as it clanged to its back in the street, clasping its uninjured hand to its shoulder wound.

"Barricade!" the Stingray snarled back, then darted forward again. "It's been too long."

The newly identified Barricade- _definitely_ a Decepticon, Luke remembered that name- lurched and shifted up to what would have been its knees, if it hadn't been transforming back into vehicle form at the same time. The damage showed even in that shape, rents in the paneling and dripping, viscous liquid marring its previously pristine form. It spouted something back in what was probably its original language, full of static and modem sounds; Luke caught a brief glimpse of a scrawl of marred lettering on one side panel now reading "To Pun-sh a-d -slav-" before its tires caught. Then it was peeling away, Sideswipe in immediate, furious pursuit.

Luke reloaded his weapon as the aliens screeched out of sight around a corner two blocks down, then warily knelt next to Belle, casting a worried glance at the rent torn in the plates covering his abdomen. Damn, Barricade's blades were sharp; it looked like whatever alloy they were made of was tougher than what the Earth had to offer. "You all right?" he asked.

"The damage is only superficial," Belle said, prodding at the peeled back layers of metal and paint with blunt, squared-off fingers as big around as Luke's forearms. "There are more serious casualties among the crowd."

"Good. Shift back, then," Luke nodded. The action had all gone by so fast he'd barely paid attention to the human element, but he could still hear Fuentes behind him, and the sobs of several shell-shocked voices. He wasn't surprised there'd been injuries, even in such a short engagement. "Can you detect them? Can you tell if they come back?"

Belle gave a discordant blatt of noise. "I would have known the Decepticon was nearby earlier if I knew what it was I'd been sensing," he said. "If they do not both start shielding, I will be able to trace their fight all over the city. And if they do, I will still have enough warning time to transform."

"That'll have to do," Luke said. "Let me know the second one of them shows up again." He waited a moment longer, to make sure Belle was successful in resuming his Gurkha shape- new scars in the rear right door and all- before whipping out Thing Two to place a few necessary, furious calls.

* * *

><p>Emergency responders were on-site to deal with the human wounded within a few minutes, and Luke and Fuentes were happy to give their statements and hand oversight of the crowd over to a swarm of NYPD. There didn't seem to be any NEST agents among them yet, but there undoubtedly would be soon; even if they didn't have their own methods of tracking incidents, Luke had blistered a few ears at their command center before being forwarded to an ass named Galloway.<p>

Classified, classified, classified. He could tell by the man's tone of voice that it was no surprise Sideswipe had been in the vicinity of Barricade. The only thing he hadn't known was the location of the rendezvous, and his voice was full of suspicion as he questioned Luke about it- he'd had a number of questions about Luke's use of the ensparked phone he'd reported 'found' at the villa north of Castrovillari. But he didn't mention Simmons. Nor did he ask about the big gray robot Barricade had attacked; if there'd been footage of Belle from someone's cell camera, Galloway was keeping mum about it.

And he seemed to expect that Luke would do the same. At least, until he reported to the Pentagon for an immediate in-depth debriefing. Luke could only imagine what would happen there. Galloway was NSA, and it seemed pretty likely that entire crew was in duck and cover mode after the black eye of Shanghai.

He fumed as he climbed into Belle, dripping with sweat, crushed asphalt powdering his clothes and Barricade's yell of 'Mutations' still ringing in his ears.

Mutations. _Plural_. Given what Simmons had said? Luke was fairly certain he knew what _that_ meant. So much for being able to keep what had happened to him under wraps for any length of time.

Fuentes was uncharacteristically subdued as she climbed in next to him, her expression dark with worry. "I got a call on my cell while you were talking to D.C.," she said.

He leaned his head back against the headrest for a moment in silent protest as Belle started his engine and pulled out into traffic, then turned his head to look at her. In that tone of voice, and given that she'd just handed her card over? "O'Conner," he guessed.

The corner of her mouth lifted in a worried smile. "Simmons must've called him as soon as he heard what was going on outside," she said. "They'll be in the States in a few hours. He wanted to arrange a meet."

"Where?" He scowled.

"Sideswipe will pick our trail up outside of town. He'll lead us in," she replied, making a face.

"That crazy silver swordsman we just met?" Luke raised an eyebrow. "They're that sure he won't still be chasing Barricade?"

Her expression darkened even further. "Apparently, he's already lost him- which means Barricade's gone to find his commander. The Decepticons were probably aware that at least one new Gamma signature had traveled from Italy to D.C.- but they had no way of knowing what it was. Now they do."

"And that means?"

"Brian wouldn't say why, but the Decepticons have started collecting any and all people and machines touched by the Allspark outside of NEST control; they've broken into several old Sector Seven strongholds in the last few days, and NEST fielded at least one attack in the last 24 hours. He said if NEST doesn't collect you- the Decepticons almost certainly will. Barricade wasn't running; he was retreating for reinforcements."

Luke's grip tightened on the steering wheel as he clenched his jaw. "Figures."

Fuentes' expression softened a little at that, and she laid one hand over his. "Luke," she said carefully. "You're the strongest man I know. But no one's strong enough to face these guys on their own. Not even with the help of- what did you call him?" she gestured at the dash.

He swallowed, turning his hand to clasp her fingers. "Belle," he said, with a faded smirk, and stretched the truth a little. "After the woman I was talking to just before he was born."

Her cheeks reddened a little at the compliment as they stared each other down. "Cute," she said, dryly. "I think you should consider it. The Decepticons aren't much different from Verone's crowd; there's no point in trying to stand alone when there's another organization just waiting to take them down."

"I don't back down, Monica," he replied. "I thought you knew that about me by now."

"This isn't backing down," she shook her head at him, reaching over with her free hand to brush tingling fingertips over a scratch on his cheek. "It's denying them the opportunity to make you the hunted instead of the hunter."

He gave her a grudging smile at that. "You know how to talk my language, woman."

An eyebrow went up primly in response. "If you want this conversation to continue? Monica's much more likely to keep me on your good side than _woman_," she said.

Luke tightened his fingers on hers, feeling the electric tingle build a little more- but whatever the Allspark energy in him was doing, it didn't seem to be affecting her in any way, and it wasn't an unpleasant feeling. "And do you want this conversation to continue?" he asked, seriously. It wasn't a topic he'd ever intended to breach in D.C., so as not to foul their working relationship- but at the moment, it didn't seem likely he'd set foot in the office there again. "Or shall I have Belle drop you off before we leave the city?"

"You think I'm about to pass this up?" She laughed at him, a low, rich sound. "You _do_ remember what I used to do for a living. I'm as much an adrenaline junkie as the rest of you."

"All right, then," he grinned in return. "Had to give you the chance; but I won't insult you by asking again."

* * *

><p>The silver Stingray picked them up just outside the city, running close escort, and guided them to a rendezvous somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. It wasn't a short drive. But the narrow, tree-lined chunk of hilly road that was their destination was much, much emptier than lunch hour in The City That Never Sleeps, and Luke understood the desire for caution. He would bet the location was obscured from satellite coverage, as well.<p>

Fortunately, Belle's abilities included a holographic projection unit; something he seemed very smug about, claiming again that 'The Allspark adapts.' And there was a _lot_ of room in the rear compartment. Luke and Monica had plenty of time to... talk... about the situation, though obviously there were a few _subjects_ they weren't going to cover with other sentient, if inhuman, beings so close at hand.

They were more than ready when Belle finally pulled over and shut down his engine, and they stepped out onto the country lane to find O'Conner and Toretto, arms crossed, resting next to each other against the hood of a familiar Dodge Charger. Sunset painted the hills red-gold around them, limning both men's bodies with warmth as they got to their feet, but they otherwise looked much as they had in Brazil. No NEST uniforms. No gloves. Just a wary _knowing_ in O'Conner's eyes that hadn't been there the last time around.

Luke deliberately nodded to the larger man first, the only human opponent who'd given him a run for his money in a physical fight in years; he respected Toretto more than he did his partner, whatever he might have in common with the latter. "Toretto," he said, with a nod.

"Hobbs," the man returned the gesture.

Monica took care of the other greeting herself, smiling at O'Conner. "Brian," she said. "It's good to see you're still in one piece."

"Nearly wasn't, a time or two," he grinned back. "But you know me."

"No," she shook her head, still smiling as she took a stance at least as close to Luke as O'Conner was standing to Toretto. "I don't think I ever really did. But it looks like we're about to make up for lost time, doesn't it?"

The former cop glanced between the both of them with raised brows, a little surprised- and a lot amused. "Ah, it's like that, is it? Well, I suppose I can't fault your taste."

Toretto made a disgruntled objection- and that finally broke the ice, bringing a reluctant grin to Luke's face. Okay. So that was how they were going to play it?

He gestured to his Gurkha, then to the Charger. "And just so we're all clear; Belle, Bestia. And Bestia, Belle."

"The one I was named for?" Belle asked, metallic voice eager.

"The one who _maimed_ me? You named him _what_?" the other car replied, sounding offended.

O'Conner chuckled. "Later, girl. You can take it up with him later. But I'd take it as a compliment, if I were you."

"And now that we're all friends here, maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on? And why now? I hadn't seen hide nor hair of any of your robot friends in _months_ before Witwicky's little handshake in Italy."

Toretto snorted and crossed his arms across his muscled chest. "Might as well tell them," he shrugged, exchanging a glance with his partner. "It was your bright idea."

"Partly," O'Conner clarified, rolling his eyes. "_Partly_ my idea."

"Really? Which part?" Luke asked, dryly. "The part where he created another NBT and abandoned him to my care? The part where _I'm_ suddenly getting called a 'Mutation' by red-eyed robots from hell? Or the part where I was just at ground zero for the latest factional dispute within arm's length of millions of innocent people?"

O'Conner made a complicated, pained face. "The part where I suggested NEST get you off our trail as part of our agreement to help their people figure out how to master this shit instead of just living with it?" he shrugged, waggling his fingers. "It was your own record that got them interested in recruitment, instead of burying you in bureaucratic hell- and when you made it clear to Sam you knew the villa attack was Starscream's work when Lennox had already made sure there wasn't any physical evidence, you confirmed their assessment. But I'd already told them you'd seemed a little uncomfortable around Bestia, so..."

The Charger rocked a little on her tires, inching forward enough to nudge the back of Toretto's thighs; he patted her absently as gravel squeaked under Belle's tires, the Gurkha reciprocating Bestia's movement.

Luke scowled, reaching out to lay a reproving hand on Belle's hood. "Another test? And you seriously thought that was the way to butter me up to work with you and jettison a career I spent a _long_ time building?" He didn't add _thieves, thugs, and oath-breakers_ to the epithetical _you_- they'd largely settled those differences as inconsequential compared to more important matters when he'd joined them to take down Reyes- but the words hung in the air between them, nonetheless.

"Like the man said, _they_ were the ones who wanted to add you to _their_ team. We ain't exactly soldiers, in case you haven't noticed. They've got a lot of special ops types, but none with your exact skill set, and since a lot of their job's been chasing down rogue Decepticons the last couple years..." Toretto shrugged.

"And you what, endorsed that recommendation?" Luke crossed his own arms.

"You caught _us_; would have kept us, if Reyes were a little less of an asshole." O'Conner shrugged, giving him that same shit-eating grin Luke had so badly wanted to smack off his face in Rio.

Luke was still deeply skeptical. "Right. And you used Witwicky because?"

"He's a bright kid. He's picked up the control techniques pretty fast, and he's been chomping at the bit to get away from Diego Garcia. He's been stuck there a lot of the last two years. Since they knew he could probably wake your truck up quickly enough for you not to notice until it was too late, and he'd have Ratchet and a backup team with him, they figured he'd be safe," O'Conner said. "The other thing, though..."

His expression darkened. "The Allspark energy _always_ reacts to the touch of other people- sometimes more dramatically than others- but it's never done anything like that before. He said he didn't know what happened, and Ratchet's scans at the scene were inconclusive. But if Barricade was calling you a Mutation..."

"Let me guess; that's their word for NBTs and affected people both," Monica said, grimly.

"Allspark Mutations, yeah," O'Conner nodded.

Luke frowned, a thought tickling at the back of his mind. Both times Belle had claimed that the Allspark adapted... he'd been referring to it in the present tense. There had to be more to what was going on with it than everyone seemed to have assumed. "This Allspark thing. All that energy was contained in one object before the kid destroyed NBE One with it? How'd that work?"

"You mean Megatron," Toretto nodded. "Gotta call a thing by its name, right Bri?"

O'Conner gave Toretto a dirty look at that. "Yeah, all the energy was in this Cube. Big metal six-sided thing, about what you'd expect from the name, with runes no one could read carved all over it. Long story short; it fell to Earth thousands of years ago, Sector Seven found it not long after Sam's ancestor found Megatron, and they discovered that channeling energy from it would give machines life. But they were always violent; Optimus says that's because so much of our technology is _based_ on Megatron and they had him housed in the same place by the time most of the experiments started. So the closest thing they had to a template to base their own programming on when the agents jolted them was the Big Ugly. In the old days, back on Cybertron, the Primes were the ones that activated it; almost every mech who's survived this long was sparked that way."

Luke narrowed his eyes. "So you had the energy in a vessel. A mediator, and some kind of intent to activate it," he spelled it all out. A vessel that had been inorganic before- but clearly wasn't, now. Except, according to Simmons, for a little piece embedded under a particular teenager's skin.

"You'd have to ask Optimus, or maybe Bee; I think they're the only ones that ever touched it with any kind of _intent_ in its old form," O'Conner shrugged. "But that sounds about right."

"You never think that a kid with a splinter of the thing in him, basically the host of the biggest piece of it left, now that you've taught him how to impress his will on that energy, might accidentally wish for the wrong thing at the wrong time?" Luke snorted at him, shaking his head in annoyance. "They feed him that recruitment story just before he went to Italy? What do you _think_ he was thinking when he went to shake my hand?"

O'Conner swore under his breath as the penny dropped, and Toretto's eyes widened in alarm.

"Fuck, maybe we _should_ get the kid some Hazmat gloves," Toretto said. "There's a thought. Put ultimate power in the hands of a fuckin' teenager. We're lucky the base is still there at all."

An engine revved behind him then, and Luke glanced over his shoulder to see the silver shape of Sideswipe tearing back up the road from where he'd been parked for better signal reception. "It may not be much longer," the NBE said. "Megatron has him."

"_What?_" O'Conner straightened up from his slouch, every muscle drawn taut. "According to whose report? I _watched_ Megatron die. And I thought Sam was out scouting grad schools with Mikaela and Bumblebee? They got him off the island as soon as that first attack on the shard failed."

"The second succeeded," Sideswipe said, shortly. "One of Soundwave's brood got through. And there was an attack on the carrier group over Megatron's drop point. As soon as Optimus heard, he diverted Bumblebee to meet up with our group, but Megatron got to them first."

"Shit. Shit!" O'Conner swore. "How close are we?"

"Not close enough," Sideswipe replied.

Toretto squeezed his partner's shoulder, expression grim. "Back in the car, then, Bri." He gave him a shove, then headed for the driver's side door, both of them completely ignoring Luke and Monica. Then he paused, door half open, to give them a dark, meaningful look. "You three in or what?"

"This asshole as bad as Reyes?" Luke replied.

"Worse," Bestia said, grimly.

"I go where Hobbs goes," Belle declared.

Monica gave him a look. "I think you already know my answer," she said. Another woman might have laced her fingers through his or batted her eyes to add a softer emotional weight; but she just stared Luke down, expression demanding.

He stared back at her for a moment, then gave Toretto a nod. "Can you brief us over the radios as we go?" he asked. "Hunting people down and making sure they pay is what I do, Mutation or no."

The corner of Toretto's mouth curled up a fraction. "Kinda making a habit of this."

"Yeah, well don't get too used to it," Luke tipped his chin. "All I'm signing up for right now is the rescue."

"We're wasting time," Sideswipe broke in, impatiently. "Optimus and the others are already converging."

"Then put your funderwear on," Luke said, walking back to Belle with Monica at his side. "And let's roll."

-x-x-x-


	6. An Energy Like No Other

**Title**: An Energy Like No Other

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _Brian stared out at the destruction marring what must have been a gorgeous stretch of natural forest, fingers tightening on Bestia's door handle. For a robot that championed peace, Optimus Prime was 4.3 metric tons of badass when he was angry._ 3200 words.

**Spoilers**: AU fusion post-Fast Five and Transformers (2007)

**Notes**: For ymfaery, for Day 20 in Wishlist 2012, for the prompt of more of my "The Fast and the NBTs" crossover universe. I hadn't intended to repost this piece from the Wishlist comm until I had the time to expand it a little more; but in light of the weekend's news, I thought I'd go ahead and put it up. It was first posted to LJ on November 26; the last bit of dialogue between Brian and Dom raises the hairs on my arms, now. RIP, Paul Walker.

* * *

><p>Brian stared out at the destruction marring what must have been a gorgeous stretch of natural forest, fingers tightening on Bestia's door handle. He'd been a little skeptical when Sideswipe had led them down a dirt track off the major highways, but there was no way to mistake the aftermath of a vicious brawl between mechanical lifeforms. He'd seen enough of that kind of damage in his days undercover with Sector Seven- or hell, even during his team's rampage through Rio. At least in this neck of the woods, there'd only been two bystanders to worry about.<p>

He could trace the path of Sam's flight by the massive gouges torn in the earth, left by clawed feet bigger than the kid himself. Whole trees lay like jackstraws on the damaged turf, surrounded by shrapnel sprays of splinters, blown off their roots by weapons fire or brute force. And here and there, tongues of sullen flame licked up a bare, stripped trunk; the scents of alien fuel and molten metal were sharp in the air from where bullets and heated blades had carved through armor into vital machinery.

Cybertronians could take a lot of damage, though, without deactivating; and whatever had happened here, only one Decepticon corpse had been left behind, sprawled on its back amidst the wreckage with only scraps of metal and wiring left above its torso. From the shape of the engines beneath it, and the shards of rotor scattered in the grass nearby, it had once been a helicopter- probably the same one that had kidnapped Sam and Mikaela.

For a robot that championed peace, Optimus Prime was 4.3 metric tons of badass when he was angry, and the rest of his people weren't far behind him. "Damn. I hope they got here in time."

"Yeah. Looks like we missed the party," Dom murmured, circling the Charger to stand next to Brian.

Sideswipe had taken off after Ironhide and the twins as soon as they'd arrived, chasing the Decepticons who'd survived the attack. Bumblebee and Ratchet, though, had cornered Prime a little further up the road. The twenty-eight-foot red and blue 'bot looked... surprisingly shiny, as though his paint was factory fresh, not as though he'd just come out of a battle.

Even stranger, Prime wasn't reacting to whatever they were gesturing wildly about; he just... stood in the middle of the road, one hand cupped in front of his chest as though holding something precious.

Something man-sized, dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans, clutching tightly to Optimus' fingers.

"Look, I think that's Sam," Brian hissed. "And it looks like Bee has Mikaela."

"So they got the kids back," Hobbs mused, walking over with Monica from where Belle had parked. "Why do I get the feeling that's not the end of the story?"

"Got a few brain cells, for a fed," Dom agreed, then set off, leading the way up the dirt track.

Hobbs gave him a dirty look and deliberately paced beside him; Brian shook his head and fell a couple of steps back, sharing an amused look with Monica. The air of weary strain that had underscored all their interactions when she'd been undercover for the DEA was gone; working with Hobbs had apparently been good for her.

"Not what you expected when you got up for work this morning, was it," he nudged her, flashing her a smile.

Monica grinned back. "Oh, I don't know. Considering we were on our way to visit your _cousin_, I had a feeling things weren't going to go exactly according to plan."

"And how _did_ you find my cousin Seymour?" Brian snorted. Simmons hadn't exactly gone into detail over the phone- there'd been the small problem of Barricade tearing up New York to deal with- but he'd said enough for Brian to guess that Monica and her 'muscle-bound goon' had made an impression.

"He asked me to 'say hi to that fickle cousin' of his the next time I saw him," she replied, wryly.

"Still going off on his 'one man, alone, betrayed by the government he loves' schtick, then," Brian rolled his eyes. "He does know his stuff, but the guy's completely crazy when it comes to the 'bots. To tell the truth, I think that's half the reason NEST let him go; to be a magnet for the conspiracy freaks, and pull in some of the folks who do need help but would never go to the government for it."

"You talk about NEST like you're not a part of it; I thought you were working for them now?" She arched an eyebrow.

"Depends how you define it," he shrugged. "Brian Wells is technically on their payroll- that's the name I went under in Sector Seven- but in practice, the team works more like consultants. We have a lot of contacts that wouldn't take well to official oversight, but are pretty damned useful in the hunt for rogue Cybertronians. It's still early days yet, but it's been working for us so far."

Though that might change with NBE-1 back in action. Megatron: the ultimate boogeyman to the human veterans of Sector Seven, not to mention the younger generation of Autobots. There was a reason most of Team Toretto had stayed on Diego Garcia after the news had broken... and judging by the amount of expletives Ratchet was venting in clear English, never mind the Cybertronian invective he was probably adding over private comm channels, they'd been right to worry. Death hadn't mellowed the Decepticon leader out any.

"Hey, hey, young ears, here," Sam objected weakly from his perch. He was paler than usual, and seemed a little shaken; more like the stressed, confined teenager that Brian first met than the confident young man who'd conquered his problems and reclaimed his life in recent months.

"And as for _you_, Samuel James Witwicky," the chartreuse robot turned to point at him.

"Oh, God; when I told you to stop calling me Samuel Prime, I didn't mean you should use my _full name_ instead," Sam groaned in reply, cringing back in the cup of Optimus' hand. "You sound like my mom. It's Sam. Just Sam. It's only one syllable; that shouldn't be too hard to remember!"

"You were told to run, and instead rushed back onto the field of battle! You may be the strongest living Avatar of the Allspark, but that won't protect you from Decepticons!"

"Yeah, well, I was pretty sure they wouldn't shoot me. I told you, there's something in my head Megatron wants, which he won't get if he turns me to mush. And it was _Optimus_." He clutched the metal fingers cupped around him more firmly, and the Autobot leader tightened his grip in response. "I couldn't just _leave_ him like that."

"You took a grave risk, Sam," Optimus chided him. "And not only in facing Megatron."

"Yeah, well, it was _my_ risk to take," Sam replied, obstinately.

"Hey," Hobbs spoke up from where he stood between an anxious Bumblebee and an angry Ratchet. "Someone want to tell us what the hell is going on? You're the ones who wanted us here. All Sideswipe said before he took off was that there'd been a fight here, and that those asshole Decepticons with the wings got away again."

A little color came back to Sam's face as his attention was drawn down to the group on the ground. "Uh... Agent Hobbs? I'd just like to say, before anything else..." he began, hesitantly.

"If you're going to apologize, kid, stow it. We don't have time for that shit. _What happened here_?" Hobbs crossed his arms over his chest, glaring up at the group towering over him, visibly unimpressed. The armored figure of Belle walking up behind him, even larger than Bumblebee if not as lethally armed, added weight to his question.

Monica moved forward to stand at his side; Brian waited for Bestia to approach, slightly behind Belle, then patted her thigh in silent question. A slight tingle of energy leaped from his hand to her frame, warning her what he wanted; Belle lowered a careful hand to pick him up, then extended the other for Dom and lifted them up to chest range to put them on more equal footing for the conversation.

Sam swallowed hard before answering. He stared at Belle for a moment, then threw Brian a strange, intent look- one he wasn't sure how to read- then sighed and gave his report.

"We were dodging a Decepticon signal on the ground when that 'copter came for us- Bee's got some damage to his roof, Ratch, make sure he sees you about that later- and dragged us off to some old industrial building. An electrical station, I think? I was kind of distracted for that part. Then Starscream hit Bee with something to make him kick us out, and Megatron grabbed me and threw me down on this concrete table. I might have cracked some ribs; it kind of hurts when I breathe. But I wasn't paying much attention to that either, because this doc-bot put a probe _up my nose_ and projected a bunch of Allspark symbols right out of my head. You know how fucked up that felt? This oily metal thing wriggling around in my _sinuses_ with Megatron looming over me the whole time, all 'There's something on your mind, boy.'" He deepened his voice, in imitation of the Decepticon leader, and gave a full-body shudder. "They were _this close_ to cutting my head open to get at the rest of it when Optimus dropped through the roof."

"The rest of what?" Ratchet asked, annoyed. "The Allspark does not reside within your physical brain structures; such surgery would have destroyed the very energy that carried the information they sought."

"Tell that to Megatron." Sam shrugged. "He was looking for some kind of energon source hidden on this planet. Long enough ago that even the Allspark memories just had directions, not an exact location." He wrinkled up his nose. "And, just for future reference? Even if you _could_ get the Allspark out of me that way, an alien brain-ectomy would _not_ be on my bucket list."

"I think I speak for all of us when I say, ditto," Mikaela added, dryly.

"Wait. A pre-existing energon source? Not that project you've been working on with Ratchet and Wheeljack?" Brian asked, surprised. He'd just helped them set up an experiment in one of the classified areas of the base, meshing his finer control over the Allspark energies with Sam's greater ability and alien database-enhanced memories.

"Nah, man; I don't think he even knows about that. Which I guess isn't a surprise, considering he's been dead this whole time. But someone definitely told him I had the information he was looking for."

Optimus sighed. "Even if he knew, Megatron would value an immediate payoff over the potential of a gentler solution. It is his nature. During the battle, he asked me if the future of our race was not worth a single human life; I told him he would never stop at one."

"Yeah, right before he _stabbed you through the Spark_," Sam shuddered again. "Seriously, never do that again. What if I hadn't been able to fix it? You were _dead_, Optimus. Finito. Extinguished. I _still_ can't believe that worked." Another tremor shook through his body.

Abruptly, it occurred to Brian what Sam must have done: the same thing all Allspark-touched humans could do, only to an insane degree. He'd laid bare hands on Optimus' frame and channeled all the energy he could into the Autobot. That was why the larger Prime sparkled like he'd never taken damage... and why everyone else was acting so clingy. No wonder the kid was shocky.

He scrounged in his pocket for one of the Snickers bars he carried to ward off his own- increasingly rare these days, but still an occasional risk- episodes of low blood sugar, and whistled at the kid.

"Heads up, Sam. Eat the whole thing, and have someone get you some Gatorade or something. You look like you're about to pass out."

Sam fumbled the catch, then stared at the bar in his hands like he'd just seen Mikaela naked and immediately tore at the wrapper with his fingernails. "Thanks, man. Seriously." He gave Brian another intent look, as if promising a longer conversation later, then sank his teeth into the chewy candy.

The Autobots exchanged looks- transmitting silently again, unless Brian missed his guess- and then carefully bent to set their passengers on the ground. "I can't promise anything, Sam," Optimus said. "But let us see what may be done to prevent another such encounter. Can you show us the symbols?"

Sam grunted as he finished the candy bar, then stuffed the wrapper in a pocket and wiped his palm on his jeans. "Yeah, sure. Anybody have a knife?"

Hobbs pulled one out of a sheath strapped to the thigh opposite his holster, nearly a foot long if it was an inch, then spun it around in a showy move to hold it out hilt-first.

"Careful what you touch this time," he snarked, popping an eyebrow at Sam.

Sam flailed, then gave the DSS agent a dirty look and took it from him.

"They come kind of in waves, but the part that repeats looks like this," he said, shaking off his irritation, and started hacking symbols into the packed earth of the road as casually as if doing math on a chalkboard. "Do you recognize it?"

Optimus watched silently until Sam was finished, then vented an imitation sigh. The longer he was around the 'bots, the more Brian noticed how much they anthropomorphized _themselves_; he'd thought his NBTs were picking up human-like behaviors from him and his family, but their NBE cousins did it, too. Somehow, it wasn't a surprise to learn their race might have been on Earth longer than previously thought.

"It is a much older form of our language, one now recorded only in the Allspark's memory. No surviving Autobot should be able to read it; only the Seekers have used it within living memory, and they have been missing for many millennia," the Prime said, slowly.

Living memory meant a lot more for sentient robots that counted age in thousands of years, not decades; but there was something about the way he'd said it...

"But _you_ can read it," Dom said shrewdly, picking up on the same thing.

"I have never read it before. But I know these words, as though they were carved into my processor before I was sparked," Optimus replied, thoughtfully. "It is the language of the Primes."

Ratchet made a strange electronic noise, exchanging a glance with Bumblebee. "What does it say?"

"When dawn alights the dagger's tip, three kings will reveal the doorway."

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Sam spoke for all of them. "The doorway to what? The energon source?"

"Is the doorway even on this _planet_?" Mikaela asked, skeptically.

Bumblebee made a querying noise, then played a few measures of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

"Would those 'Seekers' you mentioned know?" Monica wondered. "Missing could mean hiding. Brian, your cousin said he found _dozens_ of old Cybertronian signatures scattered around the planet, but no one ever followed up on them. Did he ever talk to you about that?"

"He told me a story about his mother meeting one... but I always thought it was some other Autobot or Decepticon that crash-landed here after Megatron. He never said anything to _me_ about there being more of them... but I guess at this point anything's possible."

"If Megatron's willing to go to such lengths to retrieve this information, when he's been alive again all of a day... there's got to be someone else powerful on the scene, giving orders." Hobbs frowned.

"The Fallen, perhaps," Optimus speculated. "The last words of the Decepticon we encountered in Hong Kong were, 'The Fallen Shall Rise Again'."

"Then I think we'd better be willing to take a few risks ourselves, before shit gets a whole lot worse," Hobbs spoke up again. "Obviously I'm new here, but you can ask O'Connor and Toretto about my history; I've got plenty of experience catching bad guys, by figuring out what they're going to do next and getting out in front of them. And from where I'm standing, unless you're willing to guard every one of your people- especially Witwicky- every hour of every day and hope to whatever god you worship that they don't decipher that clue on their own, your best bet is to find the damn thing first and deny it to them."

"Megatron wasn't wrong about one thing," Ratchet added, grimly. "Without energon, our race is slowly dying. The Terrestrial-borns will also have severely limited lifespans without it." He nodded to Belle and Bestia. "Our experiment is producing promising results, but a ready-made source would be a gift from Primus. Whichever side claimed it could win the war by default."

And if the Decepticons won... so much for the natives they called 'insects'. Brian pictured his son's cherubic little face, back on Diego Garcia in Mia's arms, and silently nudged Bestia to put them down.

"What are we waiting for?" he asked, standing shoulder to shoulder with Dom as Bestia transformed back into her Charger shape behind them. "Brooklyn, here we come."

"Looks like I found my excuse to raid that meat locker after all," Hobbs said, sharing a look with Monica.

"Agreed," Optimus decided, transforming back into his Mack truck shape, a shining whirl of metal parts like a work of mobile art done in shades of red, silver and blue. "Autobots, roll out!"

Bumblebee played another sound clip as he followed suit, throwing a door open for Mikaela. "_Number One, assemble the away team!_"

Belle and Ratchet assumed their vehicular shapes next, reorienting in the direction Ironhide, Sideswipe and the twins had gone, ready to move in Optimus' wake.

Brian slid into Bestia's passenger seat, shaking his head at the spectacle. "I will _never_ get past the urge to laugh when he says shit like that," he murmured, quietly.

"Till all are one," Dom quoted wryly, then reached over to lay a hand on Brian's thigh, expression falling into serious lines. "Bri..."

"Yeah?" Brian raised an eyebrow.

"Just- I got a feelin'. Watch your ass today. I doubt whatever trick the kid did for Prime would work on a human. Even you, Mr. Magic Hands."

"Me? _You're_ the one who tried to sacrifice himself in Rio."

"How many times you gonna keep bringing that up?"

"Until it sticks," Brian insisted, then leaned in to brush his mouth over Dom's, letting the Allspark energy rise just enough for his partner to feel.

"You _know_ what that shit does to me," Dom grumbled, finally pulling reluctantly away.

"Raincheck?" Brian smirked.

Dom rolled his eyes, then slapped Bestia's dash. "You heard the 'bot. Roll out."

Only dust remained where the Autobots had been; Belle was the only one still waiting, revving his engine impatiently.

Bestia spun her wheels by way of reply, then sped by, flashing her tail lights tauntingly at his grill.

-x-


End file.
